Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I withhold my request to cosponsor until I know the section 2 is in the resolution.

Mr. STEVENS. I am happy to yield.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, again, I say to the Senate that I appreciate the consideration of all concerned for having not objected in areas where they might have objected. The bulk of these amendments are amendments we will consider at length with the House. I hope we will be able to convince the House of their merit. We will also consider some of the objections that may be raised from Members of the Senate individually, from the administration, or from the Congressional Budget Office. We will do our best to have a bill that warrants the approval of the Senate.

Mr. STEVENS. I am pleased to do that, but we have to check with both sides to see about the timing. I hope the Senator will help me on that. I will check, also, to see if we can get an agreement as to when that should be. At the present time, am I correct, Mr. President, the pending business is the Murkowski amendment?

Mr. STEVENS. The Hutchison amendment was put aside. It is my understanding, I say to the Senator from Texas, it was put aside so we could proceed with the balance of the supplemental. It will be the last amendment to be considered. It could be called up by requesting the regular order by either the majority leader or myself.

Mr. STEVENS. Is my understanding correct that the amendment of the Senator from Texas is set aside?

Mr. STEVENS. Very well. Then the Senator has that right. It was not my understanding at the time, but I am prepared--I am not prepared to yield this floor until I can find out how we can get back to getting some votes and get these matters resolved and finish this bill tonight. I know my colleague is seeking to be recognized. There was a Senator who was supposed to come over and make a motion to table the amendment of my colleague. As my colleague knows, I don't do that.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it would be my pleasure at this time to yield briefly to my colleague for a question.

Mr. STEVENS. I say to my friend and colleague that we are checking out the time of 6:45. I hope that clears. It is my understanding that Senator Reid will make the motion to table the amendment of the Senator from Alaska. I could at this time start with the process of reviewing some of these amendments in my manager's package.

Mr. STEVENS. My friend can be assured that it won't happen before 6:45. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Nevada for the purpose of making a motion to table.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to vitiate Senate action on amendment No. 113 and ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have the manager's package that I mentioned, which includes 10 amendments. As I have said, we tried our best to clear these amendments throughout the Senate. I hope the Senate will agree to this package. It has been cleared on both sides. First is an amendment by Senator Helms to appropriate, with a corresponding rescission, funds for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Second is an amendment by Senator Grassley to appropriate, with a corresponding rescission, funds for regional applications programs, consistent with the direction and the report to accompany Public Law 105-277. Third is an amendment by myself to allow military technicians, while deployed, to receive per diem expenses. Fourth is an amendment by myself clarifying the intent of the fiscal year 1998 and 1999 Interior and related agency appropriations bills in relation to Pike's Peak Summit House. Fifth is an amendment by Senator Gregg in relation to an issue for renewal of fishing permits and fishing vessel operations. Sixth is an amendment on behalf of the minority leader dealing with reprogramming of funds by the Corps of Engineers. Seventh is an amendment by myself dealing with the authority to release aircraft by the Department of Defense. Eighth is an amendment on behalf of Senators Enzi and Bingaman providing funds and appropriate rescission for the Livestock Assistance Program. Ninth is an amendment on behalf of Senators Bingaman and Enzi providing emergency relief to the domestic oil and gas industry. Tenth is an amendment by Senator Domenici and others establishing an emergency oil and gas guaranteed loan program. Amendments Nos. 132 through 141, En Bloc

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send these 10 amendments to the desk and ask that they be considered en bloc.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I believe Senator Byrd is correct that there should be a reporting requirement added to this. But I leave that for us to determine at a later time. I thank the Senators involved, and, with the reinsertion of section 2, I ask that I be made a cosponsor of the resolution.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield right there?

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Yes. I am not saying I might not object to it, though.

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, so long as the Senator also has printed at the same time for the Record the joint resolution that was adopted by a vote of 52-47, following President Bush's letter.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, with due deference to my friend from Virginia, that matter is not pending before the Senate and the supplemental is. I wonder if the Senators would agree to some time limit so we can tell Members when we will get back to the bill.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that there be stricken from the amendment list Senator Harkin's relevant amendment, Senator Jeffords' three relevant amendments, and Senator Reed's OSHA small farm rider amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, let me state, so that everyone understands, that there is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment offered by Senator Bingaman regarding the use of sequential billing policy in making payments to home health care agencies under the Medicare Program; an amendment by Senators Leahy, Jeffords, and Collins providing additional funds and an appropriate rescission to promote the recovery of the apple industry in New England; and the third amendment is offered by Senator Lincoln to provide adversely affected crop producers with additional time to make fully informed risk management decisions for the 1999 crop year. I send these amendments to the desk and ask for their immediate consideration, and ask unanimous consent that they be considered and agreed to en bloc.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the votes by which the amendments were agreed to, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we have, I think, a process now to sort of relieve the roadblock, or remove the roadblock, on this supplemental bill and get it ready to go to conference tomorrow with the House. The House will pass this bill tomorrow. So I urge Senators to offer their amendments, and we will, to the best of our ability, take the Senators' amendments to conference, if at all possible. Amendment No. 128 (Purpose: To eliminate any emergency designations from the bill and provide additional offsets from unused fiscal year 1999 emergency spending)

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, my friend brought a smile to my face because I remembered Miniver Cheevy: Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Cursed the day that he was born. He was born too late. Just think, I might have been chairman of the Appropriations Committee back in the days before the Budget Act, before scoring fights, when we just talked about what the country needed. Right? But it is one of those things.

Mr. STEVENS. No, Cheevy just hoped he had lived sooner. You understand? By definition, he is dead.

Mr. STEVENS. I cannot match the memory of my friend from West Virginia as far as poetry is concerned. I was trying to think of another poem I remembered that would have been appropriate, but right now I will say this: Mr. President, here is the problem. We had a massive bill last fall. It had emergency monies appropriated that were outside the budget. Now we are reprogramming much of that money to new emergencies or to new programs which take the money away from the programs we appropriated for last fall. But now we are going to spend it somewhere else. OMB did not score that money last fall because it was outside the budget. Now the Senator from Texas has gone to the CBO and the CBO has scored that as money that is just being appropriated. We are really reprogramming appropriated money to new uses. When they score it, they do not come up with budget authority, which is the problem of the legislative committees. They come up with outlays, which is our problem. We do not have the outlays. By definition, the money, if we leave it where it is, it is going to be spent. It is going to be spent unscored. As a consequence, I have told the Senator from Texas, and I hope my friends from the other side of the aisle would agree, we will take this to conference. I made a commitment. I will sit down with the CBO and see if I can understand their point of view of why they should do this to us. Most people do not agree. It is only the Senate Appropriations Committee that is subject to this control. The House just waived the points of order. Over here, our bills are subject to points of order. The amendment of the Senator would lead to dramatic cuts in several priorities that were funded in the omnibus bill as emergency issues and not scored on outlays. And we have a provision in this bill that says those monies will continue to not be scored as outlays if they are spent for the purposes we redesignated them for: Diplomatic security, to rebuild our embassies destroyed in Kenya and Tanzania, the funding that we put up for the U.S. Government's response to the Y2K computer problem. At my request last year, we went forward very early and the Senate started that process, $3.25 billion to deal with Y2K. It was not scored, and we are reallocating some of that. The agriculture relief from last year--again, it was an emergency. We are reprogramming some of that. Above all, the FEMA disaster relief monies, all of those were not scored for outlays, Mr. President. But I understand what my friend is doing. He is trying to do the same thing we are trying to do, and that is preserve Social Security. I will be willing to do anything I can to preserve the position we have taken that Social Security funds not be touched. They were touched last fall. We are not touching them, we are reusing them. That is something the CBO cannot quite grasp right now, and I have said I will go sit down and talk to them. As a matter of fact, I will invite the Senator from Texas to come along so he will have a worthy advocate as we try to understand the new concepts of scoring outlays on monies that were already appropriated on an emergency basis. I think the Senator from Texas raises some interesting points. I do hope we will be able to accept this. I have to tell the Senator from Texas that my decision to recommend these be taken to conference is still subject to being reviewed on the other side of the aisle, and I will have to defer the final approval of the amendment of the Senator until that time. But I will call him if there is any discussion to be had on his amendment. I hope he agrees we set it aside temporarily while awaiting that response to my request. But I do intend to recommend the amendments of the Senator be taken to conference where we will explore them and try to see if we can accommodate what the Senator is trying to do without disturbing the process that we feel is our duty--to meet the emergencies as they are presented to us this year, not last year. Several Senators addressed the Chair.