Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Does the Senator realize how much we are contributing to the research base for AIDS in the world, how much we are spending from defense, NIH, from a series of accounts, in terms of basic research for AIDS?

Mr. STEVENS. Just one last question.

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator from Arizona was kind enough to give us notice of two additional amendments, and we sequenced them. I urge the Senator to wait until that is over. We are going to establish sequencing of amendments after that time. There have been others waiting, too, during the morning until this first series is over. I urge the Senator to cooperate with us, and we will put his in the sequence that comes next.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. We have $300 million right now, Madam President, in this fund. The House bill has $100 million in addition, and we have $100 million in this. Does the Senator realize we are willing to go up to another $100 million?

Mr. STEVENS. Did I hear correctly that the Senator from Illinois indicated we had reduced spending on AIDS for this fiscal year? There is an increase across the board in several different components. Does the Senator realize that?

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, after listening to a lecture in 1983 about a new problem called AIDS, I came back to the Senate and asked that $50 million be dedicated to basic research on this subject. Today, I can tell the Senate that right now we have in this year's budget alone $12.5 billion committed to AIDS. I have heard people talk about research for women, infants, and children; about the need for remembering the children; and, the fact that this bill, as Senator Boxer said, has an impact here at home. It certainly does. No one can criticize what we have done about AIDS, no one. I visited with Bono and said: Yes. We will help with AIDS internationally. We started that fund with a contribution in the year 2001. We then increased it for 2002, and we are going to increase it even more for 2003. The House has responded also with more money to help with AIDS. We are going to respond, I hope, and increase this amount even more than we did. We put in $100 million more. This will increase it again by $200 million more. That will make it a $300 million effort for this year in addition to what is already proposed and already in the system. But let me summarize for the Senate what we are doing. FDA has $77,700. The Health Resources and Services Administration has $1.918 billion. Look at what they are doing. They are doing a Care Grant Program, an Early Intervention program, Research for Women, Infants, and Children, AIDS Education and Training Centers, Dental Services, Counseling, Testing & Partnership Notification, Ricky Ray Hemophilia Relief Fund. We have the Indian Health Service, another $3 million; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, $938 million, and, in total, NIH, $2.5 billion. That covers a whole series of institutes of health. But the main thing is there is a limit to what we can do in the world to deal with the world's problem. I believe we should do more, and we are going to do more. But it has to be staged. It has to be increased in a way and be spent in a way that encourages other countries to come forward, too. When we went to visit the World Food Program in Rome this year, we found that the United States is now paying 60 percent of all the costs of the World Food Program. We used to pay 12.5 percent. Why are we paying 60 percent? Because we kept increasing, and as we increased, the other nations of the world decreased their effort. That is exactly what is going to be happening here. If we don't stage it, if we don't ask the world to come forward and join us to deal with the problems of AIDS in the world, more and more they will say: Let Uncle Sam do it. I am all for our doing our part, but our part is to match others in a world effort to deal with AIDS. We are doing it. We are doing more than that. Our budget today of $12.5 billion for the year 2002 alone--not counting this money--is half of what the world is spending. There is space here for some comments about what we should do and how we should do it. But to just genuflect and come in and say, we need $200 million, $500 million, or we need $700 million--we can't handle that in terms of the partnership we have in the world in dealing with AIDS; if we do, they will do the same thing they did in the World Food Program. They will pull back and say, you wanted to do more; go ahead and do more. It is not only 60 percent that we are spending on the World Food Program. It doesn't include the money we spend on food under the military accounts which our military people provide throughout the world, such as in Afghanistan. There is a limit. The limit is: What shall we do under an emergency appropriations bill dealing with money that should be spent before September 30? No matter what anyone else has said, this money probably cannot be spent before September 30. We will deal with more money within a month. When the bill is before the Senate, I am certain there will be an request to increase at by at least another $\1/2\ billion. Let no one say this Senator has not done everything possible to deal with AIDS. The answer is the cure and the answer is research. The answer is not putting money out in the world before the world is ready to join us in a partnership to deal with AIDS worldwide. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this chart be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I ask if any Senator objects if I ask those amendments be withdrawn at this time?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I will read the list so Senators know what is on the list: amendment No. 3558 by Senator Murray; amendment No. 3581 by Senator Landrieu; amendment No. 3584 by Senator Stabenow; amendment No. 3604 by Senator Hollings; amendment No. 3625 by Senator Cochran; amendment No. 3740 by Senator Hollings; amendment No. 3744 by Senator Durbin; and amendment No. 3745 by Senator Sarbanes. Those are the eight that have been ruled to be nongermane. It is my understanding that if those amendments were called up and objection was made the Parliamentarian would rule them not be germane and not in order to be considered at this time. Is that correct?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, in order to facilitate this, I send to the desk a list of the items that the Parliamentarian has ruled are not germane. I ask the Parliamentarian to examine that and confer. These have been ruled as not germane. There are eight of them. Parliamentary inquiry: Has the Parliamentarian confirmed that those have been ruled to be not germane?

Mr. STEVENS. Parliamentary inquiry: Should this point of order be agreed to, what is the impact on the bill?

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I move to table the amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. My suggestion is we go to third reading and let people talk and find out when you want to have the final vote.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. All eight en bloc.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia. The Senator from West Virginia is not only a great chairman, he is a great friend. I thank him for the privilege of trying to deal with the problems that occurred on this side of the aisle. I also join in thanking Senator Reid. I think he has shown persistence in trying to get this bill through. I don't criticize the concept of having gone to cloture, but I do criticize the conduct of some under cloture. We will have to deal with that later. It is a difficult process. But I will say this: I think this bill is important to the country. It is very important to the President. It is a bill which I think is very important to those of us who worked so hard to try to get it through. We are now going to go to conference with the House. Many of the provisions in this bill the House is not aware of yet, but I am sure they will be controversial. It is my hope we can move in the conference sometime next week and hopefully try to address some of the issues that are not in this bill today. They are in the House bill. We have cut out some of them. I am still bothered by the debt ceiling. I hope that leadership will look to the debt ceiling problem to see if we can't get a stand-alone bill or some way to address that issue. I remember so well in days past when it would fester and get to the point where people were being threatened of being put into jail and all of that because Congress had not acted. The debt ceiling being lifted reflects the fact that the economy of this country has expanded enormously. We have been through a period of inflation. As we go into a period of inflation and we roll over our debt, we end up with an imbalance by the passage of time rather than expenditures of money. I believe we ought to accommodate the situation so that people who are administering our laws downtown don't feel fearful of what might happen to them because of expenditures over which they really cannot maintain total control. As we get close to these debt ceiling limitations, I think Government slows down out of fear. This is no time to have that kind of reaction when we are at war. I look forward to working with everyone with the hope that we can address that problem sometime before the end of this month. Again, I thank my colleagues. I thank the Chair and everyone for their patience. I thank the Parliamentarian for his impartiality. I was happy to see yesterday come to an end. Thank you very much.

Mr. STEVENS. Either way. I think Members are still entitled to their time on cloture.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I move to table.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. That is correct.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to table the amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. When the time is ready to expire, I intend to make a motion to table the Senator's amendment. I believe others may want to speak on it, so I do not want to do that in advance, but I will say this: This is money to start this project, one that we all believe is extremely necessary due to the location of the Smithsonian. It is a very small amount of money. Maybe that is why the argument was started. It may be about a very small amount of money, but it is one that collectively, on a bipartisan basis, we thought ought to be initiated now. We will address the full amount in the 2003 bill, and I think that is proper. This is not the kind of money that has to go through all kinds of rigmarole at OMB to get released. It is money that will be immediately available to start this design, and by the time the money is released for 2003, it ought to be possible to move this really a year ahead if we start now. So I urge the Senate to support our recommendation. I do not know how the House will feel about it, but it is a nice test case to see whether or not the Senate wants to support the judgment of the Appropriations Committee on the staging of monies for the Smithsonian. This is an emergency to get that collection and everything else out of that building and get it where it should be, away from the concentrated area of the District of Columbia and the millions of visitors who come to Washington, DC.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of our committee. I regret that I must take the position we have to take on this amendment. It provides emergency funding for communities that have summer school programs. But as we look at it, the priority is given to communities that have had to eliminate or cut back on programs due to State or local budget reductions. We increased the money in the budget for 2002 by $150 million above the 2001 budget in this area. Having increased it $150 million, the State and local governments reduced their effort. And now the Senator wishes us to make up the reduction brought about by local and State reductions which they took because we had provided Federal money to assist them in the area. It is a never ending cycle if we do that. But beyond that, I call attention to the fact that we are already in June. There is no way in God's heaven we are going to get this bill to the President before July. The normal processes of releasing money would not get the money to them before September, when the school year has started. This is no way to treat our emergency bill that is before us now to deal with emergencies of homeland defense, emergencies in defense, and other emergencies. There are emergencies. The Oklahoma bridge is an emergency. But this is not an emergency. They are not needed on an emergency basis. They cannot be spent this summer. I am compelled to oppose the amendment because of the circumstance we face. I want to tell the Senate that this is the test. Everybody comes to us saying, you two big spenders are going to spend all the money around the place. The Senator from West Virginia and I have the job of trying to urge the Senate to get this bill to conference. As I said yesterday, I would like to see just a motion to go to third reading and take the bill we brought out of committee to conference, and bring the bill back by Tuesday so it might even get to the President before July 4. But under the procedure we are now following, I seriously doubt this bill will be on the President's desk before the July 4 recess, which is a travesty. This amendment adds to that delay because, I can assure you, the House will not accept this amendment. It is going to be opposed by the President and add to the bundle of sticks already there that brought about this threat of a veto. So I want to ask the Senate to support the leadership of our committee and refuse to accept this amendment because it is not an emergency, to vote against this concept of waiving the point of order that the Senator from West Virginia is compelled to make. He, as I do, believes very much in children. We believe in providing the money that is necessary. I am alarmed at the process that is underway whereby as we increase Federal spending, the State and local entities decrease theirs, so there is no net benefit to the beneficiaries we are trying to assist by bringing some additional Federal money into the areas previously occupied totally by State and local funds. I thank the Senator.

Mr. STEVENS. I object.