Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is to require certification of competition prior to appropriation of funds for the T-39N. We have discussed this matter with the Senator from Kansas and are prepared to recommend to the Senate we adopt this amendment. We will consider it in conference. There are similar provisions--the matter is discussed in the House bill, and it will be a controversy in conference.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I send to the desk an amendment I offer on behalf of Senator Cochran and Senator Lott. If I may first just explain it, this entitles the Secretary of Navy to lease to the State of Mississippi 5 acres of the property located at the naval air station at Meridian, MS, for use only by the State to construct a reserve center of approximately 22,000 square feet and ancillary supporting facilities. This will be for the co-use of the State and Federal Government, as I understand it. It does provide for the renting of this facility by the United States, once it is contracted by the State, at a rate not to exceed $200,000 a year. We have examined this lease-back concept of the reserve center and believe it is in the interests of the taxpayers of the United States to proceed in this fashion because it will mean we will have the facility and have it at an annual lease cost which is a substantial advantage to the Government.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator from Hawaii is correct. We have approved it. I hope, however, that the study requested will cover additional factors. I am one who believes that, if we had not had some of these restructurings and some of these consolidations of basic companies in the defense industrial base, we would have had the possibility of a loss of all of the companies involved in those consolidations. Because of the competitive aspect of our acquisitions, I think that more and more companies would have found they could not perform and meet the competition of those that were equally sharpening their pencils trying to think they could beat out the other company. I think it has been in the best interests of the United States that we have had selective consolidations and restructuring to preserve the industrial base. I hope a portion of this is directed toward the potential loss to the United States of the industrial base had the consolidations not taken place. But under the circumstances, I think the directions are broad enough to cover that, and I will pose no opposition to the amendment. It is a study we need; there is no question about it. But I hope it is balanced. Obviously, there are jobs lost and obviously there are costs from the reduction in the amount of procurement we are making. I just said we have reduced procurement by 60 percent. Anyone who thinks we are going to get the resultant production for the same costs or less than we were getting when we had the competition from a full industrial base is mistaken. Costs of industrial production are going up because the sources are being more limited, and there is additional cost to the taxpayer because of the inability of the limited number of companies to provide the competitive edge we used to have in terms of the industrial process. But I accept the amendment, and I am prepared to agree to it on this side.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, let me just list some major sales in the time we have. As we listened to the Senator from Illinois, I made a list. These are recent major sales: C-130J to Britain, AH-64 Apache to Britain, AH-64 Apache to Netherlands, F-16 to South Korea, Corp-San development with Germany, F- 18 to Australia, F-18 to Spain, AV-8B co-production with Britain and Spain. That is the British area being built in the United States, a co- production with Britain and Spain. And the MLRS rockets, which are so important to the Senator from Arkansas, to Germany and to Britain. Now, that is just 5 seconds of thinking about what we are doing. The impact of this amendment places those in jeopardy. Now, Mr. President, I am constrained to say that, the other night, a good friend of mine, who is a very intelligent person from academia, told me, ``You know, as we reduce our industrial base, if you in Congress continue to put restrictions on our American industry so it cannot enter into cooperative agreements abroad, we will see the day come when we will be procuring all of our systems from abroad, because technology follows production.'' Technology follows production. As we produce, we refine our systems, we develop new technology. If we are not involved in this production, we will not be able to afford the development costs and research costs to refine it. If we want to remain a leader in terms of production-- particularly now of aircraft, submarine, and military vehicles--we are going to have to understand that our allies throughout the world, who are buying our major projects, are going to insist that they be involved somehow in this overall business. Today, as I indicated, the balance is over $14 billion that we export versus about $1.3 billion we import. I do not believe that this amendment in its present form is in the best interest of the United States, and therefore I oppose it. Mr. President, I will put the Senate on notice that unless the leader disagrees, we will call for the vote in 10 minutes, and I suggest the absence of a quorum in the meantime.

Mr. STEVENS. If the Senator will withhold. I know the Senator from Illinois may want to speak. We are trying to work out a time to stack votes for a later time because there are some meetings going on that the leaders are involved in, as I understand it. I will just add this comment to my friend from Illinois. We now are becoming an industrial center for investment by foreign producers, whether it is in automobiles, aviation parts, or other types of production. We are reducing our industrial base. After all, we have reduced the amount of money spent by the taxpayers of the United States for procurement of military goods by 60 percent in the last 10 years. We have reduced it 60 percent. Now our industrial base is shrinking. As it shrinks, some of the foreign investors and foreign manufacturers are coming into our country and opening plants to take advantage of the expertise of our labor force, and they are producing some of the parts that we are exporting. This is saying to those same people who are investing in this country, creating jobs and preserving jobs here in our industrial base: That is fine. You can produce it here and we will export it, but you cannot bring into this country and compete with this country on subcontractors. I really think that is not the right policy. So while it will be a very difficult thing to convince the Members of the House to modify this, that is what we intend to do. We will not be able to do that if this amendment is adopted. We will have no negotiating room with the House at all. The export business of the United States is of sufficient importance that we must find a way. I do believe that, with the good will that exists in the House, we will find a way to reflect the concept that the House seeks, which is that we know what we are doing when these contracts are let, and that there literally be competition. But as long as we are insisting on competition, I do not think we ought to say we only want competition from U.S. sources when we are providing so much of the overseas market, as far as these military acquisitions are concerned. I urge Members to travel with us and look at this. It is an enormous market that we serve. Our military-industrial complex not only serves the military market abroad, but by producing the parts for aircraft, and parts for various types of vehicles we use, parts for our submarines, we are the parts supplier of the world. This amendment would put that in great jeopardy, and I think it should be tabled at the appropriate time. I will make the motion to table at the appropriate time. I want to defer that until I get an indication from the leadership of the proper time to request that the vote take place. Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I thank the Senator from Illinois for deferring. Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. What is the pending business now?

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

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we have just completed a series of amendments that would have taken about--well, about 12 hours under cloture. So I am grateful to the Senate for an opportunity to proceed with our bill. I would now like to announce to the Senate we would like Members who have amendments that they wish to present that have not been cleared to come to the floor. We will be pleased to consider any amendment and see if we can handle it as expeditiously as we have these that we have presented to the Senate. I might add, many of those amendments were modified substantially before we agreed to them. So we look forward to that opportunity with regard to the rest of these amendments that have been filed before cloture. The leaders, I am informed, will look at this situation somewhere around 1 o'clock to determine whether we should proceed with our cloture vote. At present, I think we could announce to the Senate, from the way we look at the amendments that have been submitted to us for review and were submitted to the Senate under the cloture procedure, if we work cooperatively we should be able to finish this bill by 7 or 8 o'clock tonight. We can do that by limiting the amount of time a Member might seek for the debate of an amendment or by assuring Members we will be more than pleased to attempt to work with them to alter the form of the amendments so we could agree to an amendment and take it to conference. I am sure my friend from Hawaii joins me in urging Members now to come to the floor to present controversial amendments. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we have examined this. There have been some technical changes made at our request. We do not object to the amendment offered on behalf of the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this is a general provision which requires the Secretary of the Air Force and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management to submit a joint report describing in detail the benefits, allowances, services, and other forms of assistance which may or shall be provided to any civilian employee of the Federal Government or to any private citizen, or to the family of such an individual, who is injured or killed while traveling in an aircraft owned, leased, chartered, or operated by the Government of the United States. This report is to be submitted to the congressional defense committees, the Governmental Affairs Committee of the Senate, and the Committee on Governmental Reform Oversight of the House, no later than December 15, 1996. This report is needed because we have had some recent accidents--the terrible accident involving Commerce Secretary Brown and other accidents--of military aircraft on which civilians who were not employees of the Federal Government were killed, as a result of the accident. I am seeking a study to determine the fairness of the situation with regard to people who may be asked, invited, by the Government to perform what amounts to semiofficial tasks, and they are involved in missions that are undertaken on behalf of the United States, and they are killed as a result of an aircraft accident. There has been some indications that some of these people do not have the coverage of benefits and other assistance that employees of the Government have, and that their survivors do not have the assistance of the laws that are in effect for survivors of those who were official employees. I wish to present to the Senate and the Congress next year legislation to see if we can correct this situation. There was a similar concept in World War II that I recall. We called them the dollar-a-year persons. They were placed on the payroll and received $1 in order that they might be considered government employees so their survivors, in the event of disaster, were given the same consideration as the survivors of those who were government employees. I do not ask the Senate, the Congress, at this time, to try to correct this, because I think there is sort of a patchwork quilt out there of benefits for survivors. I want to be able to consider this matter in the next session, as I indicated. The difficulty is that, in almost all instances, these aircraft are military aircraft, but some of them, now, are leased and some of them are actually leased for the United States but operated under other departments than the Department of Defense. So this has to be a comprehensive report for us to see what is, really, the situation under this patchwork quilt that I mentioned, and see if we can find some way to be fair and treat these survivors honorably, without regard to which agency of the Federal Government was in charge of the aircraft and without regard to whether or not they were, in fact, employees of the United States.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask the clerk to lay before the Senate my amendment No. 4564.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4564 (Purpose: To require a report from the Secretary of the Air Force and the Director of the Office of Personnel Management)

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we have examined the amendment. There is no objection to this amendment from this side of the aisle.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I have called this amendment before the Senate on behalf of Senator Bond and Senator Ford. It is an amendment that will prevent the reduction of the funds that are available under authorized program activities for the National Guard, and it has been cleared on both sides. It does indicate that if additional funds are required for a program, project or activity of a higher priority than any other in future acts, they should be submitted to Congress under section 1997 of the Defense Authorization Act. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I call before the Senate amendment No. 4442.

Mr. STEVENS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 4442

Mr. STEVENS. I do concur in this amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I read the series of amendments that have been proposed in the cloture mode, and I recall all of those amendments.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.