Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, on behalf of myself and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, I raise a point of order that this amendment violates section 306 of the Budget Act.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk for the Senator from Idaho, Mr. Craig, and ask that it be qualified.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator McCain, I send two amendments to the desk and ask they be qualified under the time agreement.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk for the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Hutchinson, and ask that it be qualified.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent these amendments not be read. They are being offered for purposes of qualification under the time agreement, and I ask that apply to all amendments, unless Senators wish to make their statements.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator's unanimous consent request included the request for a second managers' amendment; am I correct?

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I join the chairman of the Appropriations Committee in presenting this bill, S. 1077, to the Senate today. It provides necessary supplemental funds for the remainder of fiscal year 2001. Let me start off by thanking Senator Byrd for his kind comments. It is a pleasure, once more, to present a supplemental bill to the Senate together with my great friend from West Virginia. He is chairman now. I was chairman last year. I can tell the Senate, it makes no difference as far as we are concerned. We work together. We may have slight disagreements from time to time, but we work those out before coming to this Chamber. I commend him for the way he is now proceeding--as rapidly as possible--to catch up on the schedule of the appropriations bills so we may do our best to complete them all by the end of this fiscal year. As stated by Senator Byrd, this bill, as reported by our committee, conforms to the budget resources available for this year in both budget authority and outlays. The bill also matches the total request submitted by President Bush of $6.5 billion. The bill does not present any emergency appropriations. All spending is within the budget caps set by Congress and within the President's request. I commend the chairman for reporting this bill out of the committee just 1 day after the House passed the companion measure, H.R. 2216. Our committee had only 2 weeks to consider the President's request and House adjustments, and sent this bill forward with a unanimous vote in the committee. That is a great compliment to Senator Byrd as the chairman of the committee. I am pleased to join him in recommending the bill to the Senate. I urge all Members to support the bill and to adhere to the tight spending limits that have been adhered to by the committee itself. Nearly 90 percent of the funding provided in this bill meets the ongoing needs of the Department of Defense. I join also in commending the senior Senator from Hawaii, Mr. Inouye, the chairman of the Defense Subcommittee, for his determination to meet the readiness, quality of life, and health care needs of the men and women who serve in our Nation's Armed Forces. In addition to the amounts requested by the President, funds are provided in the bill for the direct care system for military medicine. Additional funds are also proposed for Army real property maintenance and spare parts advocated by General Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff. Funds are also provided for Navy ship depot maintenance and engagement initiatives for the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command. Based on extensive hearings by the Defense Subcommittee and numerous discussions with the Secretary of Defense, these amounts are adequate to meet the military's needs through the end of this fiscal year. This bill is no substitute for the significant increase in defense funds that have been sought by the President in his budget amendment. He has sought an additional $18.4 billion over the original request for fiscal year 2002. We are looking here only at amounts needed through September 30 of this year, 2001. Just 83 days from now, we will see the end of this fiscal year. Amendments may be offered that would provide additional funds for this year--for 2001. I urge my colleagues to withhold such amendments. We have adequately discussed the needs with the Department, and we believe there are no additional funds that could be spent within this fiscal year of 2001. We will have an opportunity to assess the needs of the Department through the Defense authorization and appropriations bills for 2002, the fiscal year that we will address starting on October 1 of this year. We cannot address all those needs here. We do not need to deal with the 2002 requests in a 2001 supplemental appropriations bill. I join my colleagues in their belief that we need additional resources for our national defense. I shall do my best to support the request of the President, and all other funding that we might be able to achieve, to really deal with the Department of Defense needs. The underfunding of the past cannot be corrected in one supplemental bill. The new Secretary and the President of the United States have asked for our patience while they set new priorities and determine the most vital needs for our Armed Forces. We have had significant changes in our military strategy, and we should accord the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense the courtesy they have requested and wait for their report. We need to move this bill out of the Senate today. I join Senator Byrd in committing to hold this bill to the level set by the committee and by the President for this fiscal year. We need to get the military the money they need by getting this bill to conference and out of conference this week so that they will have these funds available for the remainder of this year. I also commit to working with my colleagues to secure the funding later this month, and in September, for fiscal year 2002 and future years. In addition to the military requirements, there are several pressing disaster relief challenges that face our National Government. Through several conversations with the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh, I am anxious about the level of FEMA disaster relief funding available for the rest of this calendar year. So far, no further supplemental request has been received from the Office of Management and Budget for this fiscal year. It is my hope that additional information will be available to the conferees on this bill later this week. Challenges from tropical storm Allison, ice storms in the Southeast, and other disasters continue to stress our response capability. Especially damaging was the loss to the medical research programs in Houston, TX, during the storm Allison. The Senator from Texas, a member of our committee, has worked tirelessly to find means to address that crisis, and I look forward to working with her on that effort to the maximum extent possible. With no budget constraints, I could support additional funding for the Department of Defense, for FEMA, for LIHEAP, and several other priorities sought by many of our colleagues. We were asked by the President to limit funding in this bill to such amounts as could be spent during the remainder of this fiscal year. That is a reasonable request. We were also asked to live within the moneys available under the funding caps set by the Congress. We have already voted on that this year, and we feel constrained by those limits. We were asked to break the cycle of ``emergency'' appropriations as simply a tool to get around budget limits. We do not support those actions, and the executive branch in the past has required emergency appropriations each year. We hope we will not have to pursue that policy in the future. This bill meets the demands of the Congress and the President of the United States for budget constraints. We hope we can go to conference this week with the House. If the Senate passes this bill, as we hope, early tomorrow morning, that will take place. I implore all Senators to work with us today to complete this bill so the funds can get to the Armed Forces by the end of this week. We have been in sort of a vicious cycle in recent years whereby the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Chiefs themselves have had to determine how much they could spend in the early parts of the fiscal year because of constraints placed on them due to the deviation of funds for peacekeeping and other activities. That has led every year to a supplemental. This is one of those supplementals for funds necessary to carry out the basic needs of our military during the summertime. The steaming hours of our Navy, the flying hours of our Air Force and our Marines and Navy, the ground exercises by our Army, and the activities that take place throughout the world by our men and women in the armed services demand additional money. This is the bill to fund those for the remainder of July and August and September. Those activities will depend upon the passage of this bill. The sooner we can pass this bill, the better off we will be in terms of the training and the activities of our men and women in the armed services to assure their capabilities to defend this country. I urgently support this bill. I urgently urge the Senate to pass it as soon as possible. I request the cooperation of every Member of the Senate in trying to help us accomplish that objective no later than tomorrow morning.

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, it is my understanding that the chairman of the committee will offer another unanimous consent request for a second managers' amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Is it not the case that all amendments to this bill must be filed and presented by 6 p.m. today?

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, will the Senator indicate whether we can get some time limit to make sure people understand the time limit of submission of amendments today? Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. President, if the Senator will yield for a moment.

Mr. STEVENS. Offered on the floor of the Senate or they will not be eligible for consideration.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I regret deeply I will not be able to vote for this bill. My State does not have a problem with the HMOs that other people have expressed. Our State would be mandated by this bill to change its laws. The sensible amendment offered by Senator Collins was defeated. The Allard amendments that dealt with small business were defeated. The mandates in this bill will hamper our development of a sound health care delivery system for Alaska. It is a vast area with a few people. We do not need the interference of the Federal Government. We need help. I think this bill will interfere with what we are doing. I hope by the time it comes out of conference I will be able to support it. I commend everyone who has tried, but this, the underlying bill, will not help our people; it will hurt them; and I cannot support it.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Pursuant to rule 6, paragraph 2, I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Alaska, Mr. Murkowski, be granted official leave of the Senate until July 9.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, Madam President, I am constrained to say with due respect to the leader and the majority leader and majority whip, I find it very difficult to deal with the concept putting ahead of this supplemental the completion of two very controversial items. We know the House is going home, and having spent 8 years here on the floor as leader, I can tell you I have never seen the time when any Senate could dominate the House. We have a bipartisan agreement to go home. They have told me they will stay if we get this bill done and over there today. I do believe that the interest of national defense should come ahead of concepts that we are dealing with here in terms of whether it is the Patients' Bill of Rights or organization of the Senate. We know people will be told they cannot train in July and August unless we get this bill done this week. It is not something on which we have been dilatory. We have been trying for a long time. I have great respect for the leader and the assistant leader, but I cannot stay silent and have a concept that because the leader has stated these things must be done, they must be done before the supplemental is brought up. That is unacceptable to this Senator. I think it is unacceptable to the Senate. I hope it is. I say with great humility now that the needs of our people in the armed services must come ahead of concepts of scheduling or prerogatives here on the floor. These needs are very real. We have twice held hearings now where the chiefs have told us what is going to happen if this bill is not signed by the President before the Fourth of July. Even the concept of taking up and passing it now and letting it wait for the House to come back is unacceptable to me because, again, we all travel and we know you can't let the House go home and expect they will come back here on July 3 just before the Fourth of July. You can't travel in this country that easy during that period. So I plead with the Senate, let us proceed with this bill. We should put aside all other desires. There is no timeframe on the Patients' Bill of Rights that matters to this country. It is a bill that must be passed, and I am going to vote for it. But it does not have the urgency of this supplemental. This supplemental deals with more than that. It now deals with matters that are emergencies coming out of the disasters that have happened in this country this spring. I hope the leader will accept my comment that I mean no offense to him. I have served under several leaders, and I admire both Senator Daschle and Senator Reid for what they are doing. But it is unacceptable to me to say no in terms of a request that has come on a bipartisan basis to put this bill aside for a few hours and pass a bill as important to the military of this country as is this supplemental.

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, I am here to urge that the Senate take the bill up now. I think if we took it up now, working with the people who have those amendments, we ought to be able to finish it today. I think if we finish today, the House will stay, and we could complete this before the recess. If we wait until Monday after the House has already gone home, it will be very difficult to get them back, even from the point of view of getting travel arrangements for the House to come back on Monday or Tuesday. I cannot speak for the chairman, but I can say that we both have sought for the last 2 weeks to try to have this bill become law in time to meet the needs of the armed services. Very clearly, they have been demonstrated now. There is no question that if we do not get this bill passed, there is going to be an impact on the armed services. I will commit myself to both leaders to work with all Members to see what we can work out, to constrict the time and finish it tonight, if we can take it up now. That might put pressure on the other bill, too. I urge that the organization resolution get resolved. I personally say to both leaders, my Kenai Peninsula is on fire. That is where I want to go fishing next week, too. So there is a disaster and the urgent call of the pink salmon to respond to. I pledge myself to work even harder than Senator Reid does to find some way to constrict this time so we can vote on this and get it to the House and bring it back so we can all vote on the bill before we go home. I plead with the leaders to let us have the reins for a few hours and see what we can do. I think we can finish this bill tonight.

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, that is a little bit of a cheap shot. I am not talking about a vacation. I am willing to stay here as long as any other Senator. I am talking about the realities of the House. Leader, I am not going to forget that. That was a cheap shot, and for the time being, I object to the request.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. My question to the distinguished whip is plain and simple. Is the Senator from Nevada saying that the finite list of amendments to the Patients' Bill of Rights must be reached before we can get the finite list for the supplemental?

Mr. STEVENS. Madam President, the leader is correct about the timing. We should all stay until we finish this matter. But if we don't finish it by Thursday, and the House is already scheduled, I can tell you, you are not from as far west as I am, but you can't get reservations out of this place over the Fourth of July now. It is going to be very difficult for all of us and our staffs to get out of town for the Fourth of July unless we know now what we are going to be able to do. I am confident they will stay if they know we are sincere about finishing. I am prepared to stay tonight. We have a Republican dinner tonight, but I think we can stay tonight. That would be a time when we normally would not have votes, but we can have our debates on whatever amendments might be offered and get an agreement to vote tomorrow at the leader's discretion. We have to get this bill to the House by tomorrow noon or it is not fair to ask them to stay to complete it. We should not expect them to just stay here, cancel all their reservations, not knowing whether we are going to finish by Thursday.

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. STEVENS. I know the Senator from Oregon wishes to have a conversation. I am prepared--I think the Senator should be prepared--to present to the Senate now our wishes with regard to the agreement. From my own point of view, we have a very limited managers' amendment which Senator Byrd and I are working on, and I think we disclosed it with most people. But other than that, I know of only one amendment that is certain to be offered. That is an amendment of the Senator from Arizona. I am prepared to enter into an agreement of no more than an hour on an amendment, and amendments be disclosed here by noon. We will debate them tonight and vote tomorrow.