Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it is my understanding that the Kerrey amendment we will have a vote on. Let me ask the Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senate for recognizing the process we have to follow now to limit the consideration of issues that are extraneous to the basic appropriations bills so we can get them through. I apologize to my friend from Indiana. I do support his effort. But we had to take that action. Mr. COCHRAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the motion was agreed to.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, does the Senator from Virginia seek time? There is only 10 minutes remaining. Does he seek time?

Mr. STEVENS. I yield the Senator 30 seconds.

Mr. STEVENS. I do seek to understand if the Senator from Virginia wishes to have some of the 10 minutes. I would be happy to yield some time.

Mr. STEVENS. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, I earlier filed two amendments concerning the authorization of funds for continuing the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. After discussions with the distinguished manager's of the bill, I will not call up those amendments on this bill. The President's budget did not present any request for funds for the Bosnia mission for FY 1999. The Congress received a supplemental budget amendment requesting $1.858 billion for Bosnia operations. After four years, there is little merit in treating Bosnia costs as an ``unforeseen, emergency requirement'' as required by the Budget Act. I do not oppose the mission in Bosnia. On a visit to Tuzla last month, the delegation that I and Senator Inouye led were much impressed by the commitment and morale of the army forces deployed to Bosnia. Major General Ellis deserves much of the credit for the recent success of this mission. Despite these positive indicators, we face dealing with Bosnia costs again this year without a clear plan for the size of the force, OPTEMPO levels or future mission objectives. Further, no decisions have been made about the future funding for Bosnia in the five year budget plan now under consideration by the Department of State. Many of us agree we need more money for defense. The army cannot continue the Bosnia mission without additional funds. As the Senate proceeds to the Defense appropriations bill for 1999, we will have to consider further the approach the Senate will take for Bosnia. If our forces are to remain, and potentially face additional responsibilities for Kosovo, we must decide how much we are prepared to spend, and whether these amounts will come from within the current defense caps, or with additional real appropriations. I appreciate the willingness of the managers to provide me this opportunity to discuss these amendments, and for their concern about the impact of Bosnia on the well-being of the men and women of the Armed Forces. vote on amendment no. 3011

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, military construction is down $2 billion from 2 years ago. It is down $700 million from last year. This is not an increase. To the contrary. I do want to assure my friend from Arizona, if there was some test that these projects had to be for members of the Appropriations Committee, I can assure him there would be one for Alaska. There are none for Alaska on this list. This is not a pork list. This is a list that was prepared by our staff, the staff of the subcommittee headed by Senator Burns and part of the full committee staff working with the staff from the Pentagon to find quality projects that could be commenced in this next year that are ready to go. We have, I think, a very good list. In times gone by, people have said we should not proceed with these projects unless they are authorized, so we brought this amendment to this authorization bill to be sure they would be authorized. This is not an increase. We still will be $700 million below 1998 and $2 billion lower than 1997. I urge that Senator Burns' amendment be adopted. I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. STEVENS. I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts 1 minute, if he wishes.

Mr. STEVENS. I only yielded 1 minute. I am sorry. I will only say this: The most important thing in retention is quality of life and treating military families properly. These are projects that are all quality-of-life projects. We do not have any pork in this amendment. The Senator from Washington wishes to have time. Let me yield to the Senator----

Mr. STEVENS. I yield the Senator 1 minute.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, during the last recess, I took a group of our people to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia and Belgium. We talked personally with members of the armed services and questioned them about their decisions, some of them, not to re-enlist. When we come back from the recess, we will have the defense appropriations bill before us. There are initiatives in there to deal with retention, to deal with additional quality-of-life issues, and to deal with some of the basic problems with which the young people in our military service are really trying to cope. Mr. President, I had breakfast this morning with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. One of the great problems we have in deploying people now is very often husband and wife are in the same unit, and they are subject to being deployed. We have to have, literally, foster parents to assure that these families are treated right while husband and wife are deployed abroad. This is not a simple matter to deal with, and it does take money for military construction to meet these needs. I hope that the Senate will be ready for a debate when we get to the appropriations bill, because there are some very controversial issues in there that we seek to initiate to try to deal with the problems of families in the armed services today. I urge you to approve this as a quality-of-life amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for about 3 minutes.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it is with a sadness and real heavy heart that I report to the Senate that the former chief counsel of the Appropriations Committee passed away this morning at 7 a.m. at NIH. Albert McDermott was a longtime friend. He and I met during the Eisenhower administration when he was the Assistant Secretary of Labor and I was Assistant Secretary of the Interior. After having been with the Hotel-Motel Association for some 25 years, I convinced him to join the staff of the Rules Committee when I became the ranking member of that committee. He came on board, as I recall, in about 1991. He was a graduate of Georgetown Law School, a distinguished naval officer in World War II who was in charge of an LCT, landing craft tank, that hit Normandy beach several times, I believe. He became the chief of staff of the Rules Committee when I became chairman, and then moved to the Governmental Affairs Committee and was chief of staff there. When I became chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I asked him to take on the job of counsel for the Appropriations Committee. He retired from that position late last year. He was a grand friend, and I shall miss him very much. He was my best man when Catherine and I were married and I was his best man when he married at the age of 70. He has left behind his beloved wife, and she was a longtime friend. Krieks is a great friend now of my wife Catherine. She was also very close to my first wife, Ann. I announce to the Senate that there will be a visitation at Gawler's Funeral Home on Wisconsin Avenue from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Thursday and a memorial service at 10 a.m. at the Annunciation Church on Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I did make it, yes, against the bill. The substitute includes two titles that provide spending from a Farmers Assistance Allocation account established in the bill. According to CBO both title X and title XV would provide direct spending authority. CBO estimates that title X would increase direct spending by $18 billion over the 1999-2008 period and that title XV would increase direct spending by a billion dollars in 2009 and by half a billion dollars annually from 2010 through 2023. The substitute contains additional provisions that would cause additional direct spending. These provisions would require Medicare to pay for a demonstration project of cancer care (section 455), Medicaid to cover tobacco cessation products, (section 221). In addition, the bill would prohibit the Federal Government from recovering any of the payments made to States under this legislation as overpayments of Medicaid costs to the States (section 451(a)(5)). I believe the point of order is valid. I yield the remainder of the time to the Senator from New Mexico. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I would object unless we get time equal to all the time used by--I reserve the right to object.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am one of the members of the Commerce Committee who voted to report this bill. I think I am one of the Members of the Senate who does not take tobacco contributions. And I have very serious intentions to see to it that there is a bill passed. But I am also chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and we have 13 bills to pass. We have taken 4 weeks, now, on this bill, and I don't see any hope that it will be finished before the Fourth of July recess, the way things are going. Now, this country has to have a government and it has to have the appropriations bills come out of our committee. Members of the Senate seem to think that we are sort of the obnoxious people who bother them all the time until the time comes to decide what goes in those bills, and then I have a lot of friends. I am not going to have a lot of friends on what I want to do today, and I am sure there are people who are going to get involved, and unless the chairman of the Budget Committee wishes to make a point of order, I will make a point of order that if cloture does not come into effect--we have known all along, Mr. President, this bill violates the Budget Act. When I voted to bring it out of the Commerce Committee, I did so on the basis that we thought we could clean it up on the floor and eventually get it to conference, where it would become a bill that we would all be proud of. The trouble is, now it is just too complex and involves too much money. I decided to get involved when I heard about CBO's latest letter that went to Senator Lugar, chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and pointed out that over 25 years this bill would be in effect, the cumulative cost of title X is $28 billion and the cumulative cost of title XV is $18 billion. That is just two titles. This bill is totally out of whack with the Budget Act. When I bring a bill out here for the Appropriations Committee, our whole committee brings it out. We are subject to a point of order if we violate the Budget Act. The beauty of anybody who deals with the legislative process is, you are not subject to points of order until you get to the point that it is so extreme, as this one is, and now it does violate the Budget Act. I believe that it should go--I have suggested the idea of a task force being created. I agree with what the Senator from Massachusetts said actually. We are going to see something come back here. This concept of trying to deal with tobacco and its impact on society is not gone. But this bill has become too complex and too bulky, too cumbersome. We can't agree even on what amendments to be offered next, and we are not sure what the amendment does from the titles that are already here. Now, I had hoped that I could stay with my good friend from Arizona and provide support to get this bill to conference. I don't see any hope of going to conference. I am taking the floor to announce that while I am still for a bill that would try to satisfy what the 40 attorneys general tried to do in trying to find some way to settle this matter, I am not for a bill that continues to create more commissions, more boards, more entities, more spending, and does so in the name of spending the money that will come out of the tobacco settlement. This is a bill to spend money out of the tobacco settlement. It is not a bill to deal with stopping smoking by teenagers, but particularly targeted young women--which is something I have always been appalled by--the targeting of young women by the tobacco industry. As a practical matter, we spent too much time on our bill. We must get back to our regular, ordinary, drudge work of getting the 13 appropriations bills through the Senate and to the President. If no one else makes a point of order after the cloture on the vote, if cloture is not invoked, I will make that point of order.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I raise a point of order that the tobacco bill violates section 302 of the Budget Act as a result of exceeding the committee's spending allocation. The bill violates section 302, but I will highlight problems with the substitute. In my judgment, the substitute is vulnerable to a point of order under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. Section 302(f) provides a point of order against legislation that would cause the spending allocation of the Committee reporting the bill to be exceeded. The bill was reported from the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the direct spending contained in this bill exceeds that Committee's allocation. As a matter of fact, the bill and the substitute violate section 302(f) in a multitude of provisions. For example, the substitute contains a State Litigation Settlement account. Amounts allocated to the account would be automatically appropriated and available for grants to States. Once again, the Appropriations Committee's jurisdiction will be reduced and not subject to annual allocation. CBO estimates new spending of between $5 and $6 billion per year from this account. The substitute would prohibit the sale of cigarettes in vending machines and provides for paying the owners of cigarette vending machines (other than machines that could be used for other products) an amount equal to the fair-market value of the machines before the prohibition (section 1262). The legislation states that such payments would be subject to appropriation, but other provisions make it likely that the government would be required to make the promised payments even if discretionary appropriations are not provided. CBO estimates new spending of a billion dollars per year from this account over the FY 2000-2002 period.

Mr. STEVENS. Between now and what time?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation, may I ask, in terms of time?

Mr. STEVENS. I am liable to object unless we get an agreement to get the agreement in order. I was supposed to have half this time and the other side half the time. Now my half will be less than one-eighth. I don't object. Let's get the agreement.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now begin consideration of Calendar No. 401, which is Senate bill 2138, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999, for debate only during the remainder of today's session.