Arlen Specter

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I yield a minute and a half to the Senator from Maine, [Ms. Snowe].

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. SPECTER. The senior Senator from Maine has 90 seconds.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Maine, how much time does he wish?

Mr. SPECTER. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. SPECTER. How much time remains, Mr. President?

Mr. SPECTER. How much time does the Senator from Connecticut desire?

Mr. SPECTER. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. SPECTER. Can he settle for 2?

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, we have a time agreement. How much time does the Senator wish?

Mr. SPECTER. I thank the Senator.

Mr. SPECTER. The question is how much time he will take. There are quite a few speakers on this side.

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

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, in a few moments we will be voting on confirmation of Dan Glickman to be Secretary of Agriculture. I compliment the President on his nomination for that position. I think that former Congressman Glickman is preeminently well qualified for that position. I would like to say that I have known Dan Glickman since before he was born because we come from the same town, Wichita, KS. Actually we come from a number of towns; Wichita, KS and Philadelphia, PA. But at various times in my life I have lived in those places, and lived in Wichita. The Specter family and the Glickman family were friends for many, many years. In fact, my father, Harry Specter, was a business associate of Dan Glickman's grandfather, J. Glickman. Maybe that is too high an elevation. Actually, my father borrowed $500 from J. Glickman in about 1936 or 1937 at the start of a junk business. In those days my dad would buy junk in the oil fields of Kansas and ship them in boxcars, and ship them through Glickman Iron and Metal. And J. Glickman got the override on the tonnage. So our family relationship goes back many, many years. My family left Wichita in 1942, a couple of years before Dan Glickman was born. So that I like to say that I have known Dan since before he was born. But I have certainly have known him for his entire lifetime. I have a very, very high regard for him. the House of Representatives from Wichita, KS. He has a very thorough grasp of the agriculture community and farm problems in America; a background that I share to some extent. Russell and Wichita and all of Kansas are in the wheat country, and as a teenager I drove a tractor in the farmland. It is quite an experience to drive a tractor in the harvest, round and round knocking down grain; pulling a combine, again, again, and again. It is a great incentive to become a lawyer, which I did after moving out of Kansas. But beyond his professional qualifications and his experience, Dan Glickman is a great human being, compassionate, understanding, and will really be able to work with the problems of the American agriculture industry. Still I think he has a keen eye for budget deficits and cost reductions to fit into the trend of the times as we try to move to balance the Federal budget for the target year 2002. So I do not know that my colleagues will need too much urging because Dan has such an outstanding record and an outstanding reputation. But I wanted to add these few words in support of his nomination for Secretary of Agriculture. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Mr. FAIRCLOTH addressed the Chair.

Mr. SPECTER

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

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, the American people want government to do something about violent crime. Unfortunately, the crime bill that passed last year in the 103d Congress did nothing about one of the most serious aspects of the crime problem: the interminable appeals process that has made the death penalty more a hollow threat than an effective deterrent. have limited appeals in the Federal courts by State death row inmates. These appeals currently average more than 9 years and last as long as 17 years. Of all people sentenced to death since 1976, 266 have been executed, while over 2,900 sit in death row cells. Is it any wonder that in 1963, when the imposition of the death penalty was a real possibility that criminals had to worry about, there were 8,500 homicides in America, a rate of 4.5 homicides per 100,000 people; while in 1993 there were 23,760 homicides, and a more than doubled homicide rate of 9.3 per 100,000. The legal system has turned the death penalty into a toothless saw. National polls continue to show fear of crime to be the No. 1 concern of most Americans. One survey conducted right after President Clinton's State of the Union Address last year found 71 percent thought more murders should be punishable by the death penalty. My own 12 years of experience in the Philadelphia District Attorney's office, first as an assistant district attorney and chief of the appeals division and later as district attorney, convinces me they are right. The great writ of habeas corpus has been the procedure used to guarantee defendants in State criminal trials their rights under the U.S. Constitution. It is an indispensable safeguard because of the documented history of State criminal-court abuses such as the Scottsboro case. Unfortunately, it has been applied in a crazy-quilt manner with virtually endless appeals that deny justice to victims and defendants alike, making a mockery of the judicial system. The best way to stop this mockery is to impose strict time limits on appeals. The bill I am introducing today, along with my distinguished colleague and the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Hatch, will do just that. Criminal justice experts agree that for any penalty to be effective as a deterrent, the penalty must be swift and certain. When years pass between the time a crime is committed and a sentence is carried out, the vital link between crime and punishment is stretched so thin that the deterrent message is lost. Delays leave inmates, as well as victims, in a difficult state of suspended animation. In a 1989 case, the British Government declined to extradite a defendant to Virginia on murder charges until the local prosecutor promised not to seek the death penalty because the European Court of Human Rights had ruled that confinement in a Virginia prison for 6 to 8 years awaiting execution would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. Similarly, for survivors of murder victims, there is an inability to reach a sense of resolution about their loved one's death until the criminal case has been resolved. The families do not understand the complexities of the legal process and suffer feelings of isolation, anger, and loss of control over the lengthy court proceedings. The unconscionable delays deny justice to all--society, victims, and defendants. Since upholding the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court has required more clearly defined death penalty laws. Thirty-eight States have responded to voters' expressions of public outrage by enacting capital punishment statutes that meet the requirements of the Constitution. My 12 years experience in the Philadelphia District Attorney's office convinced me that the death penalty deters crime. I saw many cases where professional burglars and robbers refused to carry weapons for fear that a killing would occur and they would be charged with first- degree murder, carrying the death penalty. One such case involved three hoodlums who planned to rob a Philadelphia pharmacist. Cater, 19, and Rivers, 18, saw that their partner Williams, 20, was carrying a revolver. The two younger men said they would not participate if Williams took the revolver along, so Williams placed the gun in a drawer and slammed it shut. Right as the three men were leaving the room, Williams sneaked the revolver back into his pocket. In the course of the robbery, Williams shot and killed pharmacist Jacob Viner. The details of the crime emerged from the confessions of the three defendants and corroborating evidence. All three men were sentenced to death because, under the law, Cater and Rivers were equally responsible for Williams's act of murder. Ultimately, Williams was executed and the death sentences for Cater and Rivers were changed to life imprisonment because of extenuating circumstances, because they did not know their co-conspirator was carrying a weapon. There are many similar cases where robbers and burglars avoid carrying weapons for fear a gun or knife will be used in a murder, subjecting them to the death penalty. The use of the death penalty has gradually been limited by the courts and legislatures to apply only to the most outrageous cases. In 1925, the Pennsylvania Legislature repealed the mandatory death penalty for first-degree murder, leaving it to the discretion of the jury or trial court. More recently, in 1972, the Supreme Court struck down all State and Federal death penalty laws and prohibited capital punishment for all inmates on death row, or future executions, unless thereafter they contained detailed procedures for considering aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Prosecutors customarily refrain from asking for the death penalty for all but the most heinous crimes. I did that when I was a district attorney, personally reviewing the cases where capital punishment was requested. While the changes required by the Supreme Court help insure justice to defendants, there is a sense that capital punishment can be retained only if applied to outrageous cases. I agree with advocates who insist on the greatest degree of care in the use of capital punishment. I have voted for limitations to exclude the death penalty for the mentally impaired and the very young. However, I oppose those who search for every possible excuse to avoid the death penalty because they oppose it on the grounds of conscientious scruples. While I understand and respect that moral opposition, our system of government says the people of the 38 States that have capital punishment are entitled to have those sentences carried out where they have been constitutionally imposed. In those jurisdictions, the debate is over until the statutes are repealed or the Constitution reinterpreted. Many Federal habeas corpus appeals degenerate into virtually endless delays, where judges bounce capital cases like tennis balls from one court to another, exacerbated by repetitive petitions. Here is an example, Mr. President: After being convicted in California for a double murder in 1980, Robert Alton Harris filed 10 petitions for habeas corpus review in the State courts, 5 similar petitions in the Federal courts, and 11 applications to the U.S. Supreme Court. Many of those applications to invalidate the death penalty overlapped. Habeas corpus reform is not a new issue in the Senate. In 1984, the Senate first passed a habeas corpus reform measure, but the House failed to consider it. In 1990, during the 101st Congress, I offered my first legislation to speed up and simplify Federal habeas corpus procedures in capital cases. That year, the Senate adopted the amendment that Senator Thurmond and I wrote to the omnibus anticrime bill that would have reformed habeas corpus procedures in death penalty cases. Unfortunately, at the insistence of the House conferees, our provision was dropped from the conference report. Habeas corpus reform was revisited in the 102d Congress. Portions of my proposal, S. 19, were incorporated into the Republican habeas corpus reform package, which again became part of the Senate's omnibus anticrime legislation. This time, the conference committee on the Senate and House anticrime bills kept a habeas corpus reform provision in the conference report, but it was the House version. As reported by the conference committee, that version would have exacerbated the delay, not eased it. Despite late efforts at a compromise, habeas reform died with that crime bill. Again in the 103d Congress, I introduced habeas corpus reform legislation. In 1993, when the new omnibus anticrime bill was being debated in the stripped from the bill. I was dismayed. Even as the Senate was voting to establish a broad Federal death penalty, it was refusing to address the compelling need to expedite review of the death sentences once imposed. When I demanded that the issue of habeas corpus reform be addressed by the Senate, I was given the opportunity to bring my bill to the floor for debate. Unfortunately, the legislation I introduced to eliminate the delays in carrying out death sentences was tabled by a vote of 65 to 34. Which brings us to today, Mr. President. My new proposal, the Federal Habeas Corpus Reform Act of 1995, sets strict time limits on the filing of habeas corpus petitions and severely restricts the filing of any successive petition. It requires that the appropriate Federal court of appeals approve the filing of any successive petition. It ensures adequate counsel in habeas corpus proceedings. It imposes time limits on Federal judges to decide habeas corpus petitions in capital cases. And it does this so that imposition of the death penalty in State cases will become more certain and swift, making the death penalty again a meaningful sanction and deterrent. This bill builds on some innovative strategies that I first proposed in 1990. Already, much of that approach has become widely accepted as the basic building blocks of habeas corpus reform, namely establishing time limits on filing habeas corpus petitions and on Federal court consideration of capital habeas corpus petitions, and requiring that the filing of any successive petition be approved by the appropriate court of appeals under stringent standards. Under this bill, a single Federal court review will resolve most death penalty cases in under 2 years. First, a Federal habeas corpus petition in a capital case must be filed within 6 months from the final action in State court proceedings. A final decision must be made by the Federal district court within 180 days from the filing of the habeas corpus petition. And a final decision must be made by the Federal court of appeals within 120 days from the filing of the final brief. No successive Federal court habeas corpus petition could be considered unless specific leave was granted by the appropriate court of appeals, and then only for very limited reasons. In addition, the proposed expedited treatment of habeas corpus petitions in capital cases would apply only to States which agree to provide free, competent legal counsel for defendants during their State court appeals. The bill provides that the Federal government will provide free legal counsel during their Federal habeas corpus proceedings. The compressed time frame is both just and practical. It would eliminate the lengthy delays and establish habeas corpus proceedings in death penalty cases as the highest priority in the Federal judicial system. Unless there are unusually complicating factors, which must be detailed in the district court's opinion, I know that such cases can be heard within a few weeks, with no more than a week or two being required to write an opinion. Some district courts have sat on such cases for as long as 12 years. Even in States with the most prisoners on death row, such as Florida, Texas, and California, each district court judge would have such a case only every 1 to 3 years. Judges would not be overburdened. Decisions on appeal to the court of appeals should be made within 120 days of briefing. That is manageable with priority attention to these relatively few capital cases. The authority of Congress to establish such time limits was exercised in the Speedy Trial Act of 1974, which calls for criminal trials to begin within 70 days unless delayed by specified causes. The key factor in this timetable is the requirement that competent, free counsel be provided to defendants in capital cases during their State and Federal habeas corpus proceedings. I must stress, however, that the abbreviated timetable does not take effect until State court review of a sentence of death is completed. No time limit is placed by this legislation on the length of trial or on periods for consideration of post-trial motions and the State court appeals. During that period, most, if not all, of the complex factual and legal issues will be organized, analyzed and resolved by the State courts, so that these issues will not be novel when the case goes to Federal court. Requiring prisoners on death row to file petitions within 6 months of final State court action is not only reasonable, but is necessary to end the abuse in which petitioners and their attorneys now engage. A perfect example of the abuse can be seen in a recent case from my own State of Pennsylvania. Steven Duffey was convicted of a 1984 murder. His conviction and sentence were unanimously upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 1988. From then on, he did nothing until after his death warrant had been signed in September 1994. Then, on the eve of his execution, Duffey's attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition and sought a stay of execution. The Federal district judge thought himself bound to enter the stay so that the petition could be entertained. But the judge castigated the game-playing of Duffey and his lawyer. In his opinion, Judge Thomas Vanaskie of the Middle District of Pennsylvania hit on a central problem with the current system when he noted that ``[t]here is an overwhelming incentive on the part of a death row inmate to ignore until the eleventh hour collateral challenges to his or her conviction.'' He then quoted the 1994 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Steffen versus Tate, which had likewise found that ``it is almost always in the interest of a death sentenced prisoner to delay filing a [habeas corpus] petition as long as possible.'' Mr. President, this bill goes a long way toward restoring the death penalty as an effective deterrent. But to get the rest of the way there we need to address the endless delays caused by requiring defendants to exhaust all of their claims in State court before they are allowed to file Federal habeas corpus petitions. The absurdity of this exhaustion requirement is illustrated by the series of decisions involving a Philadelphia criminal, Michael Peoples. Peoples was convicted in the State trial court in 1981 of setting his victim on fire during a robbery. Following this legal trail is not easy, but it illustrates the farcical procedures. After the Pennsylvania intermediate appellate court affirmed Peoples' conviction in 1983, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied review in a decision that was unclear as to whether it was based on the merits or on the Court's procedural discretion that there was no special reason to consider the substantive issues. Peoples then filed a petition in 1986 for habeas corpus in the U.S. district court. That petition was denied for failure to exhaust State remedies, meaning the State court did not consider all his claims. The case was then appealed to the next higher court level, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the district court on the ground that the exhaustion rule was satisfied when the State Supreme Court had the opportunity to correct alleged violations of the prisoner's constitutional rights. Next, Peoples asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. Even though the Supreme Court was too busy to hear 4,550 cases in 1988, the Peoples case was one of 147 petitions it granted. After the nine justices reviewed the briefs, heard oral argument and deliberated, Justice Scalia wrote an opinion reversing the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The Third Circuit then undertook the extensive process of briefs and argument before three judges. It issued a complicated opinion concluding that the original petition for a writ of habeas corpus contained both exhausted and unexhausted claims. That ruling sent the case back to the district court for reconsideration. Had the Ddstrict court simply considered Peoples' constitutional claims on the substantive merits in the first instance, all those briefs, arguments and opinions would have been avoided. These complications arise from a Federal statute that requires a defendant to exhaust his or her remedies in the State court before coming to the federal court. The original purpose of giving the State a chance to correct any error and to limit the work of the Federal courts was sound. In practice, illustrated by thousands of cases like those of Peoples and Harris. The elimination of the statutory exhaustion requirement would mean that Congress, which has authority to establish Federal court jurisdiction, would direct U.S. district courts to decide petitions for writs of habeas corpus after direct appeals to the Supreme Court had upheld the death penalty. From my own experience, I have seen State trial court judges sit on such habeas corpus cases for months or years and then dismiss them in the most perfunctory way because the issues had already been decided by the State Supreme Court in its earlier decision. Obviously, Mr. President, Federal habeas corpus is a complex and arcane subject. Its difficult and restrictive rules simply delay imposition of the death penalty and render it useless as a deterrent. The purposes of tough law enforcement are best served by full and prompt hearings instead of a procedural morass that defeats the substantive benefits of capital punishment. In 1990, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said the current system for handling death penalty habeas corpus cases in the Federal courts ``verges on the chaotic.'' He was charitable. If justice delayed is justice denied, there's little justice left in the Federal judicial treatment of death sentences. My proposal for habeas corpus reform will bring practical reinstatement of the death penalty, so that meaningless procedures do not remain the enemy of substantive justice. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of my bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I support the line-item veto and have done so consistently in my 14 years-plus in the U.S. Senate. As I have observed the appropriations and expenditures practices of the Congress as we have run up enormous deficits year after year and have a national debt which is now approximating $5 trillion, it has been obvious to me that we needed restraints, we needed institutional change in the form of the balanced budget amendment, and that we need the line-item veto to enable the President of the United States to take a look at the budget and to act in the national interest to strike an item, item by item, without vetoing the entire bill. It has been my legal judgment that the President of the United States currently has the constitutional authority to exercise the line-item veto. I draw that conclusion from learned studies which have been made on this subject. One very prominent one is by Prof. Forrest McDonald, who traces the history of the relevant constitutional provision and notes that it was based on a provision from the Massachusetts constitution of 1733, where the Governor of Massachusetts has exercised the line-item veto. That constitutional provision has been incorporated into the constitutions of many other States: Georgia, Pennsylvania--my own State--where the chief executive officers, the Governors, have exercised the line-item veto. In the early days of the Republic, the President of the United States took action which was in effect the exercise of the line-item veto. A review of the history of the Constitution and the comments of the Founding Fathers supports the conclusion that the President of the United States was intended to have line-item veto under clause 3, article I, section 7, of the U.S. Constitution. I have endeavored to persuade the last two Presidents--President Bush and President Clinton--that they should exercise the line-item veto. I have had occasion to talk to former President Bush about it on a number of occasions. One of the interesting aspects of being a U.S. Senator, and one from Pennsylvania, is to have traveled with President Bush on a number of occasions to Pennsylvania. When we travel on the plane together there is time for a variety of subjects, not quite as hectic and hurried as it is in the regular schedule. On a number of occasions I had a chance to talk in a leisurely way to President Bush about the line-item veto. He was always interested in the issue but always told me the same thing, and that was that his lawyer told him he could not do it. My response to President Bush was that he ought to change lawyers. I immediately followed that suggestion with the request that he not tell anybody I had said that, because that might be frowned upon by the bar association and who knows, I may be practicing law again one day, sooner rather than later. But in a very serious vein, President Bush did not take the bold approach and exercise the line-item veto, which I think he could have done under the constitutional authority and which he should have done. In President Clinton's first year in office, I had occasion to travel with him to Ambridge, PA. Again, another plane ride gave us an opportunity to talk at leisure about a number of subjects. I made the suggestion to President Clinton that he should exercise the line-item veto and gave him a brief statement of what I considered to be his constitutional authority. President Clinton said, ``Send me a memorandum of law.'' I did so. He wrote me back a short time later, saying he did not want to tangle with congressional leaders on this subject. And I can understand that, because the congressional appropriation power is zealously guarded. And I am one of the appropriators. I sit on the Appropriations Committee, which has the authority to allocate the spending of $1.6 trillion a year. Notwithstanding that position on what many call the most powerful committee in the Congress, the Appropriations Committee, it has long seemed to me that the line-item veto would very well serve the interests of the country at large. We had a very dramatic commentary on massive appropriations bills, where the President did not have the opportunity to even veto one of the 13 appropriations bills side by side when we passed a continuing resolution during the administration of President Reagan. A continuing appropriations bill, for those who may be watching on C- SPAN 2, if anybody is, is a document which comes at the end of the fiscal year shortly before September 30 to authorize continued spending and continuing operations of the Federal Government after midnight on September 30 into the new fiscal year which begins on October 1. There had been a period of time where we had not passed all the appropriations bills and, in fact, had not passed many of them. We sent to President Reagan an enormous continuing resolution which was about 2 feet thick. President Reagan, in one of his speeches to a joint session of Congress, objected to the continuing resolution which denied him the power of not only, as he saw it, to exercise the line item veto but he could not even veto a bill on a major department; for example, the Interior bill or the District of Columbia appropriations bill. But they were massive--as many, I think, on some occasions as all 13 of the appropriations bills. For illustrative effect, President Reagan brought into the House Chamber where we had the joint session of Congress the continuing resolution which, as I say, was about 2 feet thick. Senator Coats was elected in 1988. Senator Coats was in the House. Of course, he remembers it. President Reagan had it on the edge of the podium. I was sitting closer than I am to the Chair. I became immediately apprehensive that this continuing resolution so bulky was in peril of falling over the podium. As the President continued to speak, the situation was more tenuous with each moment. Then, finally I figured out that President Reagan knew exactly what he was doing. He was not only keeping me in suspense but keeping the television viewers in suspense that this enormous document might fall. It was, I think, President Reagan's way of dramatizing the effect on this ponderous overwhelming bill which had come to him but could not even be managed very well on the podium, let alone managed in terms of perusal to see what was in the national interest. He was being denied the opportunity as President to at least veto a single appropriations bill. He made it through the speech. It did not fall. But I have remembered that occasion. Further underscoring the interest and the necessity in allowing the President to have the power to veto at least an individual appropriations bill, and the Congress has done better on that in modern times--sending the appropriations bills over, really on the need to have the President with the authority to strike individual items. This is an especially timely matter today in the wake of the Senate's failure to pass the balanced budget amendment. I have supported the balanced budget amendment and the line-item veto during my entire tenure in the U.S. Senate. It may be that the balanced budget amendment will return to the Senate agenda and by virtue of the motion pending for reconsideration that there may be a change of a single vote, and the matter may come back and we may yet pass the balanced budget amendment to provide the discipline to have a balanced budget in the Congress just as States have constitutional provisions mandating a balanced budget, just as cities do, as counties do, and as individuals we do because, if we do not live within our own means, we will wind up in a bankruptcy court. Recently I had the great pleasure of becoming a grandfather. My son had a baby daughter, Silvi Specter, who will be 14 months old on Sunday. I had always thought about and talked about the impropriety of having a credit card which attached obligations to our children and to our children's children and as I saw this infant and held her in my hands when she was less than a day old back on January 20, 1994, and seeing her grow up, and seeing what is really happening every day as we burden her generation and future generations on a credit card where we would not consider even remotely charging something to her account. But that is in effect what we are doing as a Nation. During the course of the debate on this line-item veto there will be many statements about how the interest rate is mounting. Senator Smith pointed out in dramatic fashion the increase on a moment-by-moment basis. That is just unfair to the next generation and the generations which follow. That is why we are working currently on a rescissions bill sent over by the House of Representatives just yesterday. The appropriators met yesterday afternoon to take a look, to do our job in cutting expenses on the Federal budget. In my capacity as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, the cut was especially onerous, some $5 billion. But I am committed to balancing the budget by the year 2002 which is the target set by the Congress, whether or not we have a balanced budget amendment. I think we have to move on a path to reach the balanced budget by that year. I have some differences of judgment with what the House sent over. But I am reasonably confident that the Senate will meet that target of the $17 billion rescission. I have concerns, Mr. President, as to cuts which will affect summer jobs where I think in America today there has been a reliance for the young people to have activities for the summer where they cannot find jobs in the private sector, a matter which keeps the lids on our big cities and our smaller communities. I have some concerns about cuts in the education line where there will be moneys taken away from drug-free schools. But this is a matter of establishing our priorities. I believe that a much, much better job can be done on establishing the priorities for America's spending. If we are not prepared to tax for it, we ought not be prepared to spend for it. If there is one thing that will not pass in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives today, it would be a tax increase. It is my hope, Mr. President, that we will soon one day take up Senate bill 488, which I introduced 2 weeks ago yesterday, which would simplify the tax system in America, which would enable taxpayers to fill out their tax returns on a simple postcard. If I may show what could be done under my proposal for a national tax, it would be a 20-percent national tax which has been worked out very carefully by Professors Hall and Rabushka of Stanford University. It will allow only two deductions for charitable contributions and for interest on home mortgages, and it would be simplicity personified. Who knows? There may be someone in America today watching C-SPAN 2 who is filling out his or her tax return. I know that individual would love the opportunity to fill it out on a single postcard as I would myself. There is an amazing amount of some 5 billion hours spent by Americans on their tax returns and some $200 billion on the cost of filing returns. But tax simplification is somewhat off the subject. But I mention a national tax just in passing. I compliment my colleague in the House of Representatives, Majority Leader Dick Armey, who has proposed a similar measure. It is my hope that we will take up the issue of a national tax and tax reform. But I believe it would be unthinkable to have a tax increase given the mood of the American people where the mandate of the last election was very direct and very blunt; that is for smaller Government, for lesser spending, and for less taxes. Certainly, the minimum is to have the balanced budget and the line- item veto, which would be a very, very important and significant step on an institutional change which would provide the mechanism to cut spending, which has not really been a priority item, and would help lead us on the bath--it might lead us on a ``bath,'' too, which is a Freudian slip--on the path to cut expenditures. But the pending line- item veto would certainly give the President the clear-cut authority and the confidence to exercise the line-item veto. In the unlikely event that this measure does not pass, I hope that President Clinton will again review the constitutional authority for the President to exercise the line-item veto under the current legal constitutional provisions. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Mr. D'AMATO addressed the Chair.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Indiana. In the absence of any other speaker on the floor, I ask unanimous consent that I might be permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes. I may use less than that.

Mr. SPECTER

Mr. SPECTER. I thank my colleague from Arizona.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for those generous remarks. I have not made a comment about the Philadelphia Navy Yard for a long time on the Senate floor. I said enough in the past that there really is not a need to say very much more. I would just make a couple of comments. That battle was lost in the Supreme Court of the United States on a very complex legal argument. Interestingly, the Harvard Law Review published an extensive review of that case, Dalton versus Arlen Specter, and came to the conclusion that the Court was wrong on its analysis of separation of powers. It is a very complicated constitutional issue as to how Congress may delegate to the President or executive agency authority to take action without sufficient standards. The thrust of my argument had been that the Navy actually concealed evidence from certain admirals that the yard should be kept open. But there were many other complex legal issues, and it was at least some satisfaction to Supreme Court. We got one interesting comment before the decision was reached. NBC television said that it was the ultimate in constituent service. We all say, ``I'm going to take that case to the Supreme Court of the United States.'' Well, we did. I thank my colleague for mentioning it and giving me an opportunity for that brief rejoinder.

Mr. SPECTER. I thank again my colleague, and I yield the floor. Mr. BURNS addressed the Chair.

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, will the Chair desist on that matter for another matter which has just been called to my attention by my colleague, Senator Santorum? And that is an issue--if we may clarify, if we can have just a minute to do that--an issue which arises in the event that Fort Indiantown Gap is realigned instead of closed, that whatever the consequence is, I just want to understand the intent of the Senator from Arizona that these funds will be reinstated if the function of Fort Indiantown Gap continues, even if it is called a realignment.

Mr. SPECTER. Of course, I make these inquiries because of the concern which I have, and I know that my colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Santorum, shares these concerns. We believe Fort Indiantown Gap is an important installation militarily, and we intend to fight the matter before the Base Closing Commission. So the net effect of this amendment, which I understand the managers are prepared to accept without a vote, would leave Fort Indiantown Gap unharmed in the event that it remains open.