Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, in the bill being reported by the House today, the House of Representatives has included additional funds for damages incurred from these storms. This amount is based on updated figures that have become available, subsequent to the President's submission to the Congress.

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Does the Senator understand, first we have to declare a disaster for that not to be accounted?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added as original cosponsors of amendment No. 2085 relating to the National Guard Youth Challenge Program: Senators Lott, Bond, and Ford.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I do have more amendments I want to take right away, but I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator from Washington, Mr. Gorton, will offer an amendment to the IMF title of the bill. I will ask unanimous consent that there be a time agreement on that amendment. He can explain the amendment. I ask unanimous consent that we have a 15-minute-per-side time agreement and that the vote on the Gorton amendment follow after the vote on the IMF amendment that has been set aside.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, to begin with, let me say to my friend from Texas, I hope he will never again say that this Senator brought a bill to the floor to cheat. If he wants to start arguments here sometime, this Senator is fairly well ready for that. But I will just put that aside for now and discuss the merits of the issue that the Senator has brought to the Senate. We have followed the Budget Act. If you look at our report that we filed with the Senate, on page 36, Members of the Senate will see the 5-year projection of outlays is in compliance with section 308(a)(1)(C) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 as amended. We have provided the 5-year projection associated with the budget authority that we provide in this bill. There are, in fact, follow-on costs for the outlays for moneys that are expended this year. They have to continue to spend for a period of years, and the Budget Act requires us to do this. It requires us not only to do it but to inform the Senate how much it is going to cost. There has been no cheating here. As a matter of fact, we have gone out of our way to make certain we have complied to the exact letter and dot and paragraph of that bill. Now, I want the Senate to know the effect of this amendment was just the contrary to what the Senator from Pennsylvania said. If we do not provide this money on the basis of ongoing accounts based upon the emergency that exists now, every year subsequently, when there are amounts to be expended, the commanders will have to do the reverse of what the Senator from Pennsylvania said. They will have to take something out of their budget. Remember, we have a flat line budget now for 5 years. They will have to take something out to accommodate for an emergency that existed in 1998. We are providing money pursuant to the President's designation of an emergency, primarily for Southwest Asia and for Bosnia. There are ongoing costs to this emergency. We have deployed people to Kuwait City and to the Persian Gulf. When the emergency is over, they will have to be brought back. Those costs are part of the emergency. But under the amendment of the Senator from Texas, they will be part of the normal operating costs of that year, and it will be just that much less available for training or for acquisition, for procurement of various items. Whatever the bill authorizes that year, these moneys will have to come out first because they have already been obligated first. For instance, the Department of Defense estimates that it will cost $250 million to redeploy these forces that went to Southwest Asia. Once they are redeployed to the United States, they are reconstituted in their units, and that cost of reassociating with various units, the total cost of that is $250 million. That is still part of the emergency. That is not something that is just a normal event taking place in subsequent years, in the year 1999 or the year 2000. The impact of what the Senator from Texas has suggested would be to say: ``The President can declare an emergency and have the funds not be counted for this year only'' means that the emergency is over on September 30. Right? Wrong. Even if the deployment stopped at the end of September 30--I hope it will stop sooner--there would be ongoing costs associated with the emergency, and that is what we have covered as the Budget Act requires us to cover. If this emergency designation is lifted, what are the consequences in 1999? We go into 1999, according to the CBO, with a $3.7 billion outlay deficit. What the Senator from Texas is saying is, notwithstanding that, we are going to add all the costs associated with the emergency from 1998 that are actually paid in 1999. If you talk about complicating the bookkeeping of the Department of Defense, I don't know of any better way to do it. If there is $400 million that remains unobligated as of September 30, and it pays out in 1999, CBO is going to score that $400 million for 1999. Even though it was an obligation that came about because of the 1998 emergency, and it is spent in 1999, we are going to have to take $400 million out. I wonder how many things are going to come out of Texas or Pennsylvania if that happens. I am not going to do it because that is over to the Department of Defense. But I can assure you that any State involved that has outlays is going to suffer, and the program will be reduced. Accommodating this amendment will bring about $2 billion in 1999 of budget authority being utilized because it will take the outlays for that year based upon procurement rates of outlays and say you cannot start $2 billion worth of acquisitions because of an emergency that happened in 1998. We should tell the Department of Defense, cancel the F-18s, cancel the ships, cancel whatever it is we are going to try to procure. I am talking about procurement outlays, which are the ones that are going to suffer the most. Mr. President, we have in this proposal--the Budget Act is very wise, really. There is an incentive to manage the money correctly, to not wish to spend it before the end of this year. The effect of the Senator's amendment would be if you can get the money spent before the end of the fiscal year, then you can take it all off this year, it doesn't count. But if you take anything into the next year, guess what. It counts against your next year's outlay allowance. So what does that do? It is a rush to the cash register for September 30; a total disincentive to manage money right. I have seen amendments that have been brought to the floor that attempted to reconstruct the whole apparatus of the Budget Act, and I have to say I have some problems with the Budget Act, and the Senate will hear about those later with regard to scoring. But this is not one of them. The Budget Act was correct. When we have an emergency or a disaster--this would cover the disaster money too, by the way. I don't quite understand what they are doing, because we have disasters. When we had our great earthquake in 1964, we did not pay for some of those things that we had to do until 1966. Look at what is going on in Georgia right now, and Mississippi and Alabama. Does anyone think that all of those levees are going to be reconstructed by September 30? I want the Senate to start thinking, and, above all, I want to say again, I want the Senator from Texas to be careful when he accuses this Senator of cheating with an appropriations bill. That does not go down lightly with me. I remember the days before when I saw majority Members arguing, and I can tell you the majority didn't last very long. The majority doesn't last very long when people come out and accuse chairmen of motives that are just absolutely unfounded. Mr. President, at the appropriate time I will move to table the Senator's amendment. I can tell the Senate I will remember the Senators who do not vote to table this amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the law we passed in August 1997, Public Law 105-33, contains this provision, which is the one I referred to before, but I want to read it now. It pertains to sequestration. When the OMB determines spending--they determine whether we lived up to the caps that are in the budget agreement--it first is instructed to examine those budgets. What it says is this: OMB shall calculate in the sequestration report and subsequent budgets submitted by the President under section 1105(a) of title 31, United States Code, shall include adjustments to discretionary spending limits and those limits as adjusted for the fiscal year in and each succeeding year through 2002 as follows: Emergency appropriations--If for any fiscal year appropriations for discretionary accounts are enacted that the President designates as emergency requirements and the Congress so designates in statute, the adjustment shall be the total of such appropriations in discretionary accounts designated as emergency requirements and the outlays flowing in all fiscal years from such appropriations. Mr. President, what we are looking at is a finding by the Congressional Budget Office which has determined--that is what we put in our report on page 36, the 5-year projection. Incidentally, just as a footnote, I hope everyone knows, they assumed we won't pass this bill, it won't become law until July 1; therefore, the outlays cannot be made until subsequently in July, possibly August and September. So they moved into 1999 a considerable amount of money that actually is going to be spent this year because we are going to pass this bill and it is going to become law before the end of April. There is no question about that. It will, hopefully, become law the 1st of April. But in any event, what has happened is we have complied with the law, and the law says we list the amounts. Although they are authorized for emergencies that have taken place this year, the spending may continue for a series of years. The Senator used an interesting analogy about Johnny breaking his arm. We have disaster money here, and there are lots of homes that have been broken. If those homes were covered by insurance, they take a look at it, the insurance adjustor says we are going to pay X dollars, and you proceed to spend that money over a period of years. You get it from your insurance account. They don't come by and say, ``OK, you only get the amount of money you can spend this year.'' That is what the Senator from Texas is saying. The disaster account is a taxpayer insurance against the calamity of disasters that take place in this country. And as such, the impact of the Senator's amendment--anyone who has had a disaster in their State this year better listen to me now because he is saying that all you can do is count the emergency only for the money that can be spent this year. It is outlays. Very little of that money is going to be outlaid this year. We know that. It is primarily the disaster money that is carried out for a period of years. The Senator mentions Bosnia, and I have opposed the Bosnian deployment. He is not correct in saying we have not budgeted and spent money, programmed money on a nonemergency basis. We have, in fact, appropriated money for Bosnia. We did this year but only through July 1. The emergency came about when the President of the United States found that we could not withdraw. Under his determination and the Joint Chiefs, they decided we have to stay there. We face the problem of paying between now and July 1 and through the end of the year for that deployment. If we do not put up the money, the money comes, as I said before, from the readiness accounts for moneys we have already appropriated for the fiscal year 1998. That will mean the readiness accounts for the rest of the military not deployed to Bosnia or to Southwest Asia will pay the cost of the emergency. Mr. President, that is a nice question, whether this is an emergency, but the President has declared it is an emergency and we have agreed it should be an emergency because we really believed when we made the bill up last year for 1998 that the troops would be out by July 1. Having done that, we spent the balance of the money in the procurement accounts and in the readiness accounts. We were operating under a ceiling. What the Senator from Texas does now, if it is not considered emergency as the President declares it is an emergency, is we have to go back, as I said, and take it out of moneys that we put into, whatever it might be--aircraft acquisition, whatever it might be--in the Department of Defense. It is not easy to find that kind of money, particularly when we have troops deployed in the field. Over 40 percent of our personnel are deployed overseas right now. If we are going to readjust anything, it has to be in the procurement accounts, and the procurement does not outlay dollar for dollar. If we cancel procurement, we only probably get 10, 15, 20 percent adjustment for outlays. Again, I say, it will take billions from the 1990 account to deal with the millions that are involved in this bill for expenditure. I am not going to belabor it except to say, once again, this is a killer amendment. I think it is against the Budget Act. I leave that to the Senator from New Mexico. I hope he will talk about it. At least in purpose it is against it. I think actually it is subject to a point of order, but I don't intend to raise a point of order. If the Senate doesn't understand this amendment, it doesn't understand defense economics and defense spending. I understand there are some people here who want to put the screws on us in terms of the next year. Remember this, Mr. President. We have no firewall between defense and nondefense next year. We have to legislate it if we can get it. The effect of this is to take money out of defense when defense is already going to be under attack as far as money in 1999. I just cannot be emphatic enough to deal with this in terms of what it means. It means that we are readjusting the concept of the accounting for emergency money. If you look at just the disaster account alone, it reneges on the commitment we have made to the people who are in the disaster area to help them pay for the cost of adjusting to that disaster. My State has more disasters than any State in the Union. We don't have any right now, except me, and I feel like a disaster right now because I really don't like this amendment. I think if Members of the Senate think about it, they will understand what we have done. This amendment impacts defense most damagingly because the funds for Southwest Asia assume current force levels and the current op tempo--the tempo of operations. We made these moneys available until expended. That means they can be expended in 1999 and subsequent years. That gives an incentive to the Department to manage their money wisely and not rush to expend it before the end of this year. The effect of the Senator's amendment would be to reverse that decision of our committee. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. STEVENS. Does the Senator mean to say with regard to disaster money that is in this bill, that only the money that is spent this year will be treated as an emergency?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we had a request not to go to a vote yet because of other circumstances and the presence of Members. I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be set aside to be called up by either the majority leader or myself when it is time to vote.

Mr. STEVENS. So that the cost of repairing the levees in Georgia or Alabama or fixing the frozen trees in New Hampshire, wherever they might be, that money, if it is not spent this year, will have to be charged against the regular bill for that purpose in the next fiscal year?

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

Mr. STEVENS. Is all time now expired on this amendment?

Mr. STEVENS. I yield back all of the time for the opposition, but ask unanimous consent to convert 4 minutes--2 minutes for the Senator from New Mexico and 2 minutes for the Senator from North Carolina. And that would be the end of the time on this amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Does the Senator from North Carolina seek time?

Mr. STEVENS. I do commend Senator McConnell, as chairman of the subcommittee, and Senators Hagel, Roberts, Kempthorne, Craig, Senator Grams of Minnesota, Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, and my good friend from New Mexico also on this matter. I think it has brought about a better understanding of what we are doing. I must also say that the Secretary of Treasury, Mr. Rubin, has been working with us and helping to iron out this problem. He has had a working relationship with us, which I think bodes well for the future. Did the Senator from New Mexico wish to say something? Time has expired.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. STEVENS. I yield the floor.

Mr. STEVENS

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