Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I intend to make a short statement and move to table. Could the Senator make his comments after that?

Mr. STEVENS. For how long?

Mr. STEVENS. I might say to the Senator that we have a 5:30 cloture vote, and we have an agreement. I am informed that following the vote on my motion to table we will have an agreement dividing time between the proponents and opponents of the cloture motion and then vote on the cloture motion. I will be more than willing to say the Senator gets the first 10 minutes after the cloture vote. The cloture vote was supposed to take place at 5:30. We are jammed in on it right now.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am not prepared to agree to that because I understand that we have a commitment that we will go out of session at that time.

Mr. STEVENS. I have no objection.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, let me make sure that everybody understands what we are voting on. The Senator from Texas complains-- and I think rightly--that we are spending really a great deal of money on disasters. They grow every year, and it is because the moneys that we have allocated to disasters under authorization laws and under regulations have increased. I tell the Senator that the money available during the period right after the great earthquake in Alaska in 1964 compared to the amount of money that was available to those people who were harmed by the California earthquake--the California program for recovery--was much more heavily financed, and necessarily so. New concepts of assistance have grown since that time. If the Senator wants to examine and ask the Congress to examine and put limits on what we spend after a disaster, this Senator would be pleased to work with him on it. If the Senator wants to say that we ought to predict how much money we are going to have available for disasters and put a cap on that, this Senator would never agree with that. If the great Madrid Fault down by Tennessee ever slips again, as it did in the middle of the last century, to the extent that the bells in Boston rang when that earthquake took place in the middle of our continent, if that would happen today, the cost of that disaster would be just overwhelming. There is no way to predict how much money we are going to spend on disasters. As applied to this bill now, I say to the Senator, if the Senate adopts this amendment, I will move to recommit this bill to the Appropriations Committee because we cannot afford to have such a heavy balance on the 1999 bill that we are working on now for fiscal year 1999 if the Senate adopts the amendment of the Senator from Texas. Disasters aside, the major impact of this amendment is on defense. It would say that any moneys that are spent for the Bosnian or Iraqi deployments after September 30 would count against the allocations that we are already looking at for 1999 under the budget that the President has submitted to us. I have said before to the Senate, we believe that the impact of this amendment would mean procurement cuts--cuts in the amount of money we allocate to procurement of $2 billion in 1999. That is because when we authorized the use of $2 billion in 1999, the amount that actually would be spent would be about $400 million. That is what it does to the bill we are planning now. I just do not think that we should have a supplemental that so hamstrings the budget for the full year of 1999 in a way that was never contemplated by the President's budget nor is it contemplated by the budget before the Budget Committee and ready for submission to the Senate. This issue should come up but should come up in other ways, and that is how much money we will spend per person on a disaster. Does the Senator seek time before I make a motion to table?

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator is correct.

Mr. STEVENS. I might say to the Senator that we just had a discussion with the Senator from Minnesota, and I understand there is an agreement to postpone the cloture vote that has been scheduled for 5:30. So I am going to move to table, and I would renew the request of the Senator from Minnesota that following that vote on my motion to table he get 10 minutes, and after that we will be happy to have any amendments that the Senator from Oklahoma has. All right.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I reluctantly but enthusiastically move to table the amendment of the Senator from Texas and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. STEVENS. Under the unanimous consent agreement, the Senator from Minnesota has 10 minutes coming now.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this has been agreed to. It is an amendment that deals with slots at airports for commuter airlines. And it is a problem that, as I said, has been agreed to on both sides. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of Senator Frist's and Senator Byrd's amendment.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Would the Senator just yield to me for one question of the majority leader? We have a series of amendments, when we come back in, that have been cleared and that we are in the process of clearing. I just want to notify all Senators, we will be working on amendments to the bill after the presentation of the former majority leader. So in particular, we wanted to stress the needs for FEMA and CDBG amounts that are part of the request.

Mr. STEVENS. No. We want to see if there is objection. So if anyone has any objection, I would like to know before we go out. Thank you.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. It is my understanding that the amendment of Senator Gorton has been cleared on both sides, and I know of no other debate. I congratulate the Senator for working so hard on this amendment. I remember the discussions that he and I had with various members of the South Pacific community in Australia when we were down there earlier this year. This certainly reflects the general feeling in the Senate. The Senator is to be congratulated for doing this.

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

Mr. STEVENS. I ask unanimous consent that amendment might be temporarily set aside.

Mr. STEVENS. I will send to the desk the managers' package of amendments that have been cleared on both sides: The first amendment, for Mr. Leahy, to eliminate the State matching requirement with respect to certain amounts made available for fiscal year 1998 for the Small Business Development Center Program of the Small Business Administration; the second amendment, for Senators Coverdell, Cochran, Bumpers, Boxer, and Cleland, to provide additional funds for emergency watershed and flood prevention separations and strike certain earmarks from the bill; third is an amendment, for Senator Kennedy, to authorize the Secretary of Defense to lease or create another type of short-term interest in certain land near the Massachusetts Military Reservation; fourth is, for Senators Coats and Lieberman, to extend the National Defense Panel to the end of fiscal year 1998; the fifth amendment is on behalf of Senators Shelby, Byrd, Boxer, and Senator Dorgan, to provide funds for emergency railroad rehabilitation and repair; the last amendment is on behalf of Senators Gregg and Hollings, to allow the transfer of funds from various agencies to the State Department to address the cost of departmental overhead. As I indicated, these have all been cleared on both sides. I ask for their consideration.

Mr. STEVENS. 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. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. STEVENS. I have additional amendments that have been cleared on both sides. The first amendment, by Senator Ashcroft, is on the IMF and opening markets to agriculture; second is an amendment by Senator Hollings to send a Treasury team to collect data on industry statistics and the impact of the Asian economic crisis; and the last is an amendment by Senator Grassley, accompanied by a statement that he wished to insert in the Record before adoption of the amendment regarding reforms in bankruptcy laws. I send the package to the desk.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay the motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2120 (Purpose: To strike unrelated and unnecessary HCFA funding from the bill)

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Nickles.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, Senator Nickles intends to raise that amendment tomorrow. It has not been cleared. Amendment No. 2080