Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. That is correct. That argument was made earlier. It led to the counterargument of should we have to defer because the House is not in session? I am somewhat unwilling to base action on the House not being in session. But the Senator from Oklahoma is correct that the House is not in session and that the practical reality would be that there would be no continuing resolution. I had said earlier to the Senator from Illinois that, as much as the funding is in jeopardy in Illinois and Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, it would be more so if we shut down the Government. I have relied principally on the substantive arguments that this amendment simply takes too much away from Peter to pay Paul, and that the resolution is going to have to come with the subcommittee bill and with the reallocation of funds. I think there will be more funds, Mr. President. There have been signals given that there will be an additional $5 billion on a number of programs, which will have to be shared with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Veterans Administration. But I expect a significant amount of money to be added as a result of the negotiations to the subcommittee which has jurisdiction over education. That concludes my argument. I will allow my colleague from Massachusetts to take his last minute, and then I will seek to regain the floor before formally yielding the remainder of the time before making a point of order under section 311 of the Budget Act.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I yield to Senator Nickles.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I will be in a position to yield back time after a brief statement. The Senator from Massachusetts has claimed the prerogative of the last argument. I do not know that he is entitled to it, but I will let him have the last minute. The essence of this matter is that the Senator from Massachusetts has offered an amendment to restore funding in education to the 1995 level, and that is a proposition that I agree with on the merits. I chair the subcommittee which has jurisdiction over the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. When the subcommittee received an allocation which was $1.534 billion more than the House, all of that money was put into education, with the leadership of the distinguished ranking member, Senator Harkin, and myself. While I agree that we ought to have more money in education, I must oppose this amendment. If the allocation stays as it is, and no additional money is added to the subcommittee allocation by an agreement reached between the President and the leadership in the Congress, then there will be a 10.5 percent cut on many, many very, very important programs. These programs included the National Institutes of Health, employment and training and older workers' jobs programs, Social Security Administration, nutrition and other programs for the elderly, LIHEAP fuel assistance, community and migrant health centers, Ryan White on AIDS, maternal and child health substance abuse, railroad retirement benefits and many, many others. Now, that is simply an intolerable situation. What the Senator from Massachusetts may be intending to do here is to get momentum to have more money in education. I have already suggested that I believe that is counterproductive because I would favor that as a matter of principle, but cannot support this amendment. There are other Senators I know who would also favor it as a matter of principle. So if you take a look at the number of Senators who are going to vote in favor of this amendment, it is not going to be representative of those who would like to have more funding in education.

Mr. SPECTER. How much time remains?

Mr. SPECTER. Agreed.

Mr. SPECTER. I do.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, how much time does the Senator from Oklahoma desire?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, when the Senator from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, denigrates my arguments, I have to respond. When he says, ``Let us not fool the American people,'' I would suggest that his arguments and this amendment do precisely that, and the reason they do it is because this amendment proposes to reinstate funding to the 1995 level, makes that representation, but in fact it does not do it. It does not do it because it lasts for only 49 days, and because almost all of the expenditures in an appropriations process do not take effect until July 1. When you talk about the expectations of the educators as to what they are going to do and representations made about how many teachers will be laid off, they are not going to derive any solace from this amendment. What this amendment really is, is a grand show to say that there are many people who are arguing for it who think education ought to have a higher funding level. That is something that I agree with. And that when the Senate was allocated $1.6 billion more with my leadership and the leadership of Senator Harkin, that was all put into education. To personalize it for just a minute, I have expressed repeatedly, on this floor and off, my support for education. And on the personal level, neither of my parents had any education to speak of. My father came to this country as an immigrant, had no formal education. My mother came at the age of 5, went to the eighth grade, and my brother and my two sisters and I have been able to share in the American dream because of our educational opportunities. I do not take second place to either Senator from Massachusetts on my devotion to educational funding or to anybody else who has argued in favor of it. If they seek to gain momentum, I think they are counterproductive here. They are going to lose votes on this amendment. If you want to say how many Senators support an increase in funding for education, you are not going to be able to tell it when this vote is taken. I know the distinguished Senator from Oregon, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, is going to vote against it. He has told me so. I am going to vote against it because of what it does, if it stands, it is going to take tremendous sums of money from many, many other programs which everybody who has spoken in favor of the amendment would hate to see happen. This is an exercise in futility and an exercise in counterproductivity. So that when you say, ``Let us not fool the American people,'' let us identify who is trying to fool the American people. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, when the Senator from Minnesota talks about choices and says that I am putting him in that position, this amendment puts the whole subcommittee in that position because if it passes and there is no increased allocation, the fact of life is that everything in the whole bill with the exception of the Department of Education, Headstart, and school-to-work programs would be cut by 10\1/ 2\ percent. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Minnesota, because he talks about the tax cuts, does the Senator from Minnesota agree with President Clinton to cut the tax by $130 billion?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I inquire of the distinguished Senator from Minnesota. The question is about what happens on the current state of the allocations. Again, with much of what he has had to say, I do not disagree in terms of priorities. But if you do not increase the allocation to the subcommittee which I chair, which has jurisdiction over Health and Human Services, which has funding for LIHEAP as well as education--what happens to the other programs. I ask this of the Senator from Minnesota because he spoke extensively and eloquently on this subject. Unless we increase the allocation, which I would like to do, is it not true that we are going to lose $105 million in funding for LIHEAP?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the matter which the Senator from New Mexico refers to involves the K-12 technology learning challenge, where the request was in at $50 million and the House was at $25 million and the Senate was at $15 million. But the overall education technology, ESEA, title III, are on the figures I cited where we are funding in excess of last year, more than twice the funding recommended by the House.

Mr. SPECTER. The President had a request for $122 million. Last year's funding was $55,625,000. The subcommittee recommended a figure of fiscal year 1996 of $57,475,000. So we did not cut the President's request by two-thirds.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from New Mexico said that the House reduced the President's request on education technology by half and the Senate reduced it by two-thirds. I offer the statistics made available to me by staff and ask unanimous consent they be printed in the Record, the full sheet.

Mr. SPECTER. Notwithstanding the suggestion by the Senator from Massachusetts, you cannot do that unless the House of Representatives agrees to it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. I agree with the Senator from Illinois that we ought not to simply accept anything, what the House says or anyone else says. I compliment him on his imaginative three alternatives, but none is going to come to pass. I yield the time. Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. SPECTER. Briefly. On Senator Kennedy's time?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I again agree with a good bit--almost all--of what the distinguished Senator from Illinois has had to say. However, if we do not pass this continuing resolution--the House of Representatives rejected a motion to recommit last night by a vote of 222-193. Now, there is an additional factor beyond what we have debated so far. That is, at least according to the information provided to me, there is not a quorum in the House to act on what the Senate will do. I do not like the posture that we are in. The practical fact of life is that if we add this amendment, there will be a disagreement, no continuing resolution, and the funding which now goes to the schools in your State, Senator Simon, including Chicago, on education, schools in my State, schools across the country, will not have any additional funding.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, let me make strong exception to the Senator from Massachusetts using the word ``disingenuous.'' That is the most inappropriate thing he has said here today, among many inappropriate things. I am interested to know that he supports a tax cut. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I am a little surprised to hear the Senator from Massachusetts make the statement that this Senator supports a $245 billion tax cut. I am surprised to hear the Senator from Massachusetts make that representation because, even though he cannot be on the floor all the time, I know he very seriously reads the Congressional Record. He must have noted my vote against the tax cut repeatedly when it came up on the reconciliation bill. This Senator has not supported any tax cut at all. On my time, let me ask the Senator from Massachusetts if he agrees with President Clinton that there ought to be a $130 billion tax cut.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I seek recognition.

Mr. SPECTER. I yield the floor.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I take the answer from the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts to be a yes. The import of his answer is that there will be a decrease in NIH funding, and there will be a decrease in funding for every other program covered by the appropriations allocation for my subcommittee, which has the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, as well as the Department of Education. I have asked the question twice, and twice the Senator from Massachusetts has said that he does not accept the allocation. Well, I do not accept the allocation either, but Senator Kennedy does not run the U.S. Government, and neither does Arlen Specter. Before there is going to be a change in the allocation, there has to be an agreement between the executive branch, the President, and the Congress of the United States. Right now, what we are dealing with is an allocation for three departments. I do not like the allocation, but that is the allocation. And you cannot take $3 billion and add it to education without crippling many, many other vital accounts. You will be taking an enormous amount of funding out of the older worker's jobs program, community and migrant mental health centers, maternal and child care, substance abuse; and if I did not have a limitation of time, I could go through many, many programs, which I know the Senator from Massachusetts would not want to take funding out of. But the answer is--and it is reading between the lines on what the Senator from Massachusetts has responded--these programs will lose funding under the current allocation. I am prepared to fight with him to increase the allocation. But I am not prepared to see an amendment pass here today which gives false and unrealistic hopes to the education community. It is not even Confederate money that Senator Kennedy is offering here today, it is illusory money, it is pie-in-the- sky. He says it lasts for 49 days. There is no expenditure in that period of time. If it lasts longer, he is going to gut many, many other programs. So I think it just has to be rejected. How much time remains?

Mr. SPECTER. I yield on my time.

Mr. SPECTER. My next question for the Senator from Massachusetts is, is it not true that if the funding is not increased and the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts stands, that there will be a decrease of $1.253 billion from NIH?