Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator's amendment would change the procedure for every Department or Agency in the Federal Government in terms of the concept of what must be published in the Federal Register. It also has an exception for withholding publication of any document that is classified. But in the period of time we are in right now, I don't have time to research this in terms of what does this do to the Department of Defense, what does it do to the CIA, what does it do to the FBI, what does it do to every other organization of the country. I have tried to clear this. There is a great deal of what has been eliminated, but I, too, am a member of this Governmental Affairs Committee, and I could not ever remember taking it up in the Governmental Affairs Committee. I understand what it is, but I don't understand its impact on the agencies I am supposed to protect in terms of the Department of Defense. I cannot in good faith accept that. I renew my request that following the vote on the managers' package, no further votes be in order and we proceed immediately to third reading under the proceedings as outlined, which will be outlined in fuller detail at that time, but it will mean that will be the last vote of the day and we will not vote past taking the bill to third reading. The Kohl amendment comes first.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I don't know of anyone on our side who asked for time on the amendment. I believe the Senator has explained it. I ask unanimous consent that when we start consideration of this vote, there be no further amendments in order, and that immediately following the vote on the managers' package, we go to third reading of this bill, and we have a procedure arranged so that we would hold this bill at the desk until the House bill arrived and it would automatically be married to the House bill and sent to conference as soon as possible.

Mr. STEVENS. I intend to renew the request. This is a unanimous consent that the amendments we have here in the managers' package be considered en bloc following the vote on or in relation to the amendment offered by Senator Kohl.

Mr. STEVENS. I withdraw the request.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the consideration of Senator Kohl's amendment, the amendments that I shall offer en bloc be considered en bloc, and adopted en bloc as a managers' package.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 455.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Chair lay before the Senate Senator Kohl's amendment? Amendment No. 455

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am grateful to the Senator from Arizona for that suggestion. I point out to him before we proceed--and we will proceed; I will ask Senator Kohl to be prepared to offer his amendment, and following that we will offer the managers' amendment--but just this afternoon, I was notified that travel and transportation for members of the armed services was not authorized in some circumstances. One of these amendments authorizes transportation of families of the people who have been injured to Germany, or wherever they are, so they can see their loved ones. They did not have that authority. An amendment in this bill will do that. They also do not have the money and authorization to buy, for a young person injured and coming back not on a gurney, but needs civilian clothes, something different to wear other than a military uniform because of the injury--we have a provision in here for the purchase of civilian attire for medical evacuation of members of the Armed Forces. Those came to me at 6 o'clock. I think they are relevant to this bill, one of the six the Senator has not seen yet. There are a lot that came up. I suggest we proceed. The managers' package concept replaces the old litany of amendments that were offered and offered and offered. I remember one time we were here 40 hours. That is what you get into when you do not have a managers' package. Is Senator Kohl here?

Mr. STEVENS. No, I will wait.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator.

Mr. STEVENS. I thought we would finish the bill in time for the Senator to be with his wife.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, my great friend from West Virginia today told me of the difficult problems he has and wanted to leave by 5:30. I thought we might make that. Again I find myself apologizing to my friend twice in 2 days.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, sir.

Mr. STEVENS. If we finish this Tuesday, the bill cannot be finished by next weekend because we have to have time for both Houses to prepare a chart on a bill such as this, to see what our differences are, so we can go into conference and deal with the differences. If we pass this bill Tuesday, the House will pass it Tuesday or Wednesday, and we will not be able to get it finished by a week from Friday.

Mr. STEVENS. I yield to my friend.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have great respect for the Senator from Arizona. He provides really a service to the Senate to make us think about these issues. I have thought about all of these. In fact, a dozen Senators on either side are already carrying a grudge because they didn't get their amendment through the process to even get to the Senator from Arizona because they were rejected by someone in the committee of jurisdiction. Let me say to the Senator, for instance, the $10 million for the South Pole is not an add-on. We took that money off an account and put it in there because they had a disastrous winter. This is the last supplemental for this year, as far as we know. Only another tragedy and the war could bring us to another supplemental. We are going into regular bills after this bill. We will have nights such as this on some of them, probably. The money for the Department of Energy was identified by several Members, and that is security at nuclear facilities. It was debated on the floor. It was raised here and debated. I asked them to put it into the package because it was my opinion that it was, frankly, raising the bill a little too much, and I didn't want it to look as if I was accepting those amendments. There are a few others that we accepted that go in the bill. As you say, there are times that it is possible to reduce amendments voted on the floor in conference; but when the Senate votes overwhelmingly for an amendment on the floor, it is difficult to deal with in the House--if the House doesn't want to put the full amount up and to reduce it, or negotiate it. We have several amendments. Senator Kohl's amendment, for instance. He has been courteous in allowing us to put that amendment--it will pass, by the way; I know it will pass. I will tell the Senate that there is not an amendment in this managers' package that I believe would pass the Senate if raised individually. Why do we have a managers' package? Because we have cleared each amendment with the committee of jurisdiction, cleared by the majority and minority on the subcommittee involved in our Appropriations Committee, and cleared by Senator Byrd and myself, and we have cleared them or offered them to Senator McCain and to Senator Reid, or whoever wants to look at the package can look at it. It is a package of convenience. By putting these amendments together on items we think would pass anyway, we might be able to go home at a decent hour tonight. I might be able to keep my commitment to the Senator from Hawaii to be in Hawaii with him when he gets his great honor on Saturday. That may not be possible because I have a job and I will stay until we do it. It is also a problem that a couple of the Senators have already departed, and they are relying on us to put these in the package because they had other problems with family, and they are not here now. I can think of three of them who are gone who have amendments in here. We passed judgment on a collective basis. It hasn't just been myself, or myself and my colleague, or our staffs. Everybody in the system is involved in clearing a bill, including the Senator from Arizona who knows I cleared several with him as chairman of the Commerce Committee. All I say is, I am prepared to proceed in any way that the Senate wishes to proceed with the amendments. There are 25 amendments in this package. They call it the first package. Several are being cleared that will go in this. There is a group of, I think, six that is still out there being cleared. Of these, Senator McCain has agreed with 11 out of the 25. He agrees to modify four others that were not in my accounting. So we can proceed with those on a consent basis and see if the Senator wants to call up the amendments. We are going to be here for a long time if we do that, but in fairness I don't have the ability to withdraw these and say the Senators cannot offer them. They allowed us to use them in the package mechanism so we could save time for the Senate. It is obviously not going to do that. I am prepared, however, as soon as I get the balance of this, to offer them all and let the Senator object and then we will move them one at a time.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent to be recognized when he has finished.

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent we listen to Senator McCain for 10 minutes and see what objections we can possibly remedy with the problems he has with the managers' package.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I would like to be able to discuss what we are going to do now. We have the managers' package that has some problems. We have to decide how to get out of it. It is my suggestion that we listen to the Senator from Arizona on some of the objections he has to items in the managers' package and see what we can do after the Senator explains his position. How long would the Senator like to talk?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to table that amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I want to make clear what I stated before. I do support the Specter amendment. By virtue of the approach the Senator from Pennsylvania has enunciated, we end up with more moneys in this area of great concern, but we increase the amount of money in the bill by $200 million. There was already $100 million in the committee-reported bill. I do accept Senator Specter's approach to this. I am hopeful we can convince the House to recognize that this is the proper way to allocate the money the President requested and convince them that the amount we have in this bill is sufficient to meet the objectives we all seek to attain. I urge Senators to vote for the Specter amendment. Again, reluctantly, I state I am opposed to the amendment offered by the Senator from New York and his colleagues.

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