Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

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

Mr. STEVENS. Now, Mr. President, I will announce, once again, that this is the managers' amendment. It incorporates a series of amendments that we had agreed to accept on both sides prior to the cloture motion being filed. It has been checked with the persons that had some question about it. I now believe that it is still cleared on both sides. With that concurrence from the Senator from Hawaii, I ask if he concurs that it be adopted.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we have a series of amendments that have been filed, and we have been notified of a series that Members will seek to debate. We have an understanding with the leadership that a cloture motion will continue to be set aside so long as we proceed expeditiously with this bill. Senator Inouye and I are prepared to debate and consider any amendments that Members have indicated they wish to bring before the Senate. We will announce to the Senate that if there are no Members that wish to bring the matters before the Senate, we will go to third reading.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I restate my request. I have an amendment at the desk. I ask unanimous consent that it be considered as a substitute for the pending amendment.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I want to wait a minute in total fairness. We are trying to contact one Senator. I want to make sure there is no disagreement. We have the list here, if anyone who is observing these proceedings is concerned. This will, in effect, adopt the amendments that we were prepared, before the cloture motion was filed, to recommend to the Senate as one managers' amendment. That is our proceeding now. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. STEVENS. I stand corrected. This is an amendment based upon a series of amendments that I will articulate after we adopt this amendment. This is a managers' amendment. It has been drafted and prepared by Senator Inouye. With his consent, I have called it up as an amendment in the second degree to the pending amendment. I want to give notice to all Senators that it is being brought up and it is a technical amendment. However, it does cover a series of amendments that were filed in cloture. This amendment, if adopted, covers amendments Nos. 4466, 4439, 4467, 4468, 4469, 4470, 4471, 4472, 4473, 4474, 4475, 4476, 4477, 4478, 4481, 4482, 4483, 4484, 4485, 4486, 4487, 4488, 4511, 4565, 4567, and 4576. I believe that is the list. Because of the cloture requirements, we filed separate amendments to achieve the same objective as the managers' amendment we had worked out before the cloture motion was filed. These were a series, not totally technical, of amendments that had been worked out on both sides and cleared on both sides for inclusion in this bill by unanimous consent. If we adopt this amendment, I will ask that the amendments I have just read be withdrawn. I turn to my friend from Hawaii to seek his concurrence in this procedure.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes, I will. Does the Senator from Hawaii have any remaining amendments he wishes to consider?

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I am sad to announce to the Senate that the Department of Defense has requested that we oppose this amendment because it would impose a burdensome and relevant complication on the evaluation process. This is a very difficult process to work out. The United States sells over $14 billion in military equipment overseas. We import about $1.3 billion. It is obvious that we have a substantial interest in continuing exports which lower the unit cost of our production that we must buy to maintain our own defense. The defense industry that is engaged in the export also has asked us to oppose this amendment. If a contractor selects a U.S. contractor and the U.S. contractor goes out of business or cannot perform and there is no other U.S. source, the net effect of this amendment would prohibit the prime contractor from seeking a subcontractor abroad from the country of one of our allies. This is a similar provision to the House bill. It will be in conference, and we will work out some of this issue in conference. Contrary to some of the reports I read in some of the papers this morning, the Defense Subcommittee does still confer, and we confer at length and ad nauseam sometimes, but we will confer on the issue because it is a House bill. One of the basic problems that we have is if we interfere with the prime contractor's ability to select the best subcontractor available, we are not only imposing a burden on the contractor to respond to a solicitation that he has presented based upon availability of competitive bidding from subcontractors, the net result, Mr. President, will be the increase in costs of the defense efforts of the United States, to the taxpayers of the United States. I view this amendment as being one which is very difficult to deal with because it is so appealing. What we are saying is the DOE policy with regard to evaluation factors would be legislated by Congress in such a way as to eliminate the ability of a contractor to look to a foreign source for a portion of the work that contractor commits to do on behalf of the Department of Defense at the taxpayers' expense and, by definition, a competitive contract. I believe this will nullify existing procurement agreements that we have. We have some 20 longstanding allies who buy a considerable amount of their military products from us. To a great extent, we see enormous entities in the industrial base. In the United States, many of the subcontractors are from overseas. This Senator and other Senators have been criticized for going to things like air shows, for instance. We go to trade shows and air shows to see who is out there, what is the strength of the United States vis- a-vis the foreign supplier, and are we correct to the extent that we are even buying the $1.3 billion that we buy from overseas through the use of taxpayers' funds, and directly by our contractors who do buy from subcontractors overseas. I personally believe this is a very strong export business. Let me say, it is a $14 billion export we are looking at. That export is a strong, strong portion of our industrial base. It represents a strong portion of our industrial base. If we were to adopt the approach of the Senator from Illinois and the approach represented in the House bill totally, in my judgment, we would place at risk this strong export business. Therefore, I am sad to say I intend to move to table the amendment, subject to the comments of my friend from Hawaii.

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

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask that it be temporarily set aside to take up another amendment, which is amendment No. 4480.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Could we have order?

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, we entered into a time agreement, if I may respond to the Senator from Arkansas, based upon our conversation. There is at this time I believe 30 minutes equally divided.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, it is the plan of the managers of the bill to have the debate on the Bumpers amendment. We feel that amendment will go to a vote sometime between 20 after and 25 after 6. After that, we will have the Harkin amendment, and it will be voted on sometime around 7 o'clock. After that time it will be my intent to ask that all further votes be stacked until tomorrow morning commencing at 9:30, and we will have final passage following that. There will be some few statements just before final passage. We do have a series of amendments to debate yet tonight, but we will have no more votes after the Harkin amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. How much time is the Senator seeking?

Mr. STEVENS. I will not seek the floor if the Senator wishes to speak now.

Mr. STEVENS. I will be happy to do that, but the Senator was on his feet. I will be glad to let him speak now if he wishes to speak.

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. I am pleased to agree with that procedure. We normally try to get a time agreement, if the Senator wishes a time agreement. We do not know how many other Members wish to speak on the Senator's amendment, so we will defer that. Has the Senator submitted his amendment?

Mr. STEVENS. We promised the Senator from Iowa he could proceed with his amendment. As soon as he is finished, we will be glad to consider that, if that is agreeable. Amendment No. 4890 (Purpose: To permit up to $10 million of appropriated funds to be used to initiate engineering and manufacturing development of airborne mine countermeasure system)

Mr. STEVENS. We would be happy to. How much time does the Senator wish?

Mr. STEVENS. I yield to the Senator from Indiana for a request. Privilege Of The Floor

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

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, this has been cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of a Senate resolution that I submitted earlier today, Senate Resolution 279.

Mr. STEVENS. I have submitted this Senate resolution to commend and thank Dr. LeRoy T. Walker, the current president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, for his contribution to amateur sports in the United States. Dr. Walker has been the USOC president since 1992, and has been involved with the USOC since 1977. He is the first African-American to be the USOC President in the 100-year history of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Dr. Walker started working for the U.S. Olympic Committee the year before the Congress enacted the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. That was a bill I introduced in the Senate, Mr. President. That act marked the beginning of the modern Olympics in the United States. Dr. Walker has been the leader in carrying out Congress' vision for the modern Olympic movement through the Amateur Sports Act. He has brought the U.S. Olympic Committee from an era where its budget was in the tens of millions to its most recent budget in the hundreds of millions. Athletes in the late 1970's were a different kind of amateur than today's Olympians who are able to earn millions of dollars in endorsements, and whose fame is far greater due to the substantial television coverage that we now enjoy. The Olympics have gone from being held once every 4 years to once every 2 years, with the staggered Summer and Winter Olympics schedule. Dr. Walker has guided the Olympic movement in the United States and in the world through these significant changes and growth. The resolution that I have submitted mentions many of Dr. Walker's accomplishments with the U.S. Olympics and with other amateur sports organizations over the years. Let me speak briefly on some of the remarkable things Senators may not know about my friend, Dr. Walker. Dr. Walker was the youngest of 13 children raised in Harlem during the Great Depression. He was the first person in his family to earn a college degree in 1940. Not only did he earn the degree, but he graduated magna cum laude from Benedict College in just 3\1/2\ years. During that time, he earned 12 varsity letters in football, basketball, and track and field during that same time. Dr. Walker was selected as an All-American quarterback in 1938, but kept the fact that he even played football a secret from his mother until his commencement because she was worried he would get hurt. He earned a masters degree from Columbia in 1941. Columbia did not allow African Americans to earn doctoral degrees at that time, so Dr. Walker went to New York University to earn his Ph.D. He was only the second African American to earn a Ph.D. at New York University. Before Dr. Walker became involved with the U.S. Olympic Committee, he had one of the most remarkable coaching careers in the history of sports in the United States. In all, he has coached football, basketball, and track teams that produced over 80 All-Americans, 40 national champions and 10 Olympians. He coached or consulted the Olympic track teams of Israel in 1960, Ethiopia in 1960, Trinidad-Tobago in 1964, Jamaica in 1968, Kenya in 1972, and served as the head men's coach of the U.S. Olympic track and field team in Montreal in 1976. Any one of Dr. Walker's achievements--whether his own athletic successes, his coaching accomplishments and his academic endeavors--not to mention his service with the U.S. Olympic Committee--would be a great achievement for most of us. Dr. Walker has made those achievements look routine. We commend him today for his leadership in preparing the United States for the 1996 Olympics and for preparing the U.S. Olympic Committee for the challenges of the 21st Century. Dr. Walker is the 23d president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and truly is one of the founding fathers of amateur sports in the United States. His tenure as U.S. Olympic Committee President, and his long and distinguished career in amateur sports, will be capped off with the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, GA, which begin shortly. It will be my pleasure to go to Atlanta on Wednesday to deliver to Dr. Walker the resolution I am presenting to the Senate today. I hope the Senate will join me in support of this resolution commending and thanking Dr. Walker for all that he has done for amateur sports in the United States. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of the resolution.