Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I previously spoke on an amendment to provide for a study and report regarding Federal student loan disbursements to students attending foreign schools. I offer that amendment at this time.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, for the record, I made reference to this amendment earlier, but I inadvertently submitted another amendment. This is the amendment to which I spoke previously. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I object.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Please.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I see the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary Committee. We had some hearings last week and some movement toward judicial confirmations, for which I am happy. I am glad one judicial nominee from Alabama was one of those which was moved. Of course, there was no controversy, I believe, about any of those nominees. Traditionally, it has not been necessary to have a big hearing if everybody is happy and respectful of the nominees. That is the way it has always been. If people have questions and concerns, they come. I think it is a good thing that we are seeing some movement. But I would like to see more. That is why we have not been able to have an agreement on the foreign ops bill. I think that bill could move at any time we could get a fairly reasonable consensus on processing nominees. I know there is a nominee from Alabama who is unanimously rated as well qualified by the ABA in a district which has had two of the three judges vacant for over 2 years. It is probably the No. 1 critical district in the country. We critically need a hearing on that judge. We have others who are pending. In fact, President Bush nominated 11 individuals on May 11, a highly qualified group. But only three of those have received a hearing, and only two have been confirmed out of that group. We have a growing backlog. We confirmed some judges. We went down from 110 vacancies to 108, I believe.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the chairman. I remember so vividly how aggressive he was to make sure President Clinton's nominees were moved promptly. I can give his speech because I have heard it many times. Basically, his complaint was that the Republican majority, under Chairman Hatch at that time, was not moving Federal judges effectively enough. At that time, when we finished this last Congress and President Clinton was in his last days, there were 67 vacancies in the Federal courts. He said that was unacceptable, and he thought it should have been lower than that, although there were only 41 nominees. President Clinton submitted only 41 nominees for the 67 vacancies, which was what was left. There were 41 nominees unconfirmed when President Clinton left office. Now we are pushing probably 60 nominees. And the vacancies have gone from 67 to 108. It may now be back up to 109, even though we confirmed 2. You can constantly have judges out of the 800 or so taking retirement. As you do, if you do not have a constant flow of nominees being confirmed, the vacancy rate grows. Senator Leahy declared that the 67 vacancies we had last year was a crisis in the judiciary, and there was something awful about that. I thought we were moving pretty fast. Frankly, 60 or so vacancies is about the standard. It is hard to get it below that because when a judge retires, then the President has to decide who he would like to consider for nomination. There have to be background checks on them and ABA reports. It takes some time to move forward. But when the number gets up to nearly twice that to 108 or 109, 110 vacancies, then we have a bigger problem. I think we ought to be able to keep that number close to the 60. We are not moving fast enough. I think all of us agree. I know former Chairman Hatch feels strongly about this, as do others. We need to see what we can do to reach an accord. There is some suggestion--I am not one who necessarily thinks we will do so--that we will be finishing up a little earlier this year than normal. That means we may not have more than 4 weeks or so left. If we are going to do just a couple of judges a week, we are going to end up with well over 100 or so vacancies when we leave this time. That is too many. We could do a better job of moving the nominees for which there is no objection to nominees that have bipartisan support--nominees that received ``qualified'' and ``well-qualified'' ratings. We believe that is the way we ought to go. I also say in addition to the foreign operations appropriations bill, there are a lot of important pieces of legislation that come before this Senate. There are a lot of things that need to be moved. There are a lot of appropriations bills that we could be debating and discussing. I suggest we keep working with the majority leader and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Let's see if we can't get some sort of commitment to give an extra effort to reduce somewhat the number of judges who are pending but have not been confirmed and get that number down, or else I think those of us on this side have to conclude that we have some sort of slowdown going on. I think it is the right thing for us to ask. It is a just thing to ask. If it is a vacancy rate that far exceeds that which occurred under President Clinton's time in office, the very same people who were critical of this Congress moving President Clinton's nominees for judges are now creating a much larger vacancy rate. I believe we can do better. I know we can. I know we can move the noncontroversial judges better than we are doing. I urge us to spend some extra time on that. If so, we will be able to eliminate this hurdle that is creating a problem with the foreign operations appropriations bill. Hopefully, we will have a good bill that we can all support. Hopefully, we will have an agreement that is fair and just and reasonable which would allow more nominees to be moved. I am sure we are not going to be able to get our vacancy rate down to the level of the 1960s, which is where it ought to be. But we ought to be able to get it moving down well under 100 in some sort of agreement that could be reached. That is my observation and my concern at this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate the leadership of Senator Schumer on the Court Subcommittee. I know he is a good lawyer, and he cares about the court system. We have had some very interesting hearings under his leadership. They do, however, reflect an idea that was openly stated at a Democratic retreat early this year, that the ground rules for confirming judges to the courts should be changed. Apparently, at that retreat, a brilliant but liberal law professor, Laurence Tribe, and Cass Sunstein, and Marcia Greenberger advised the Democratic Senators that they should ``change the ground rules''--that is a quote from the New York Times--used in the confirmation process and make it more difficult to confirm judges. That is after the Senate gave President Clinton a fair hearing on his judges. This is important to note: In the 8 years that President Clinton was in office, he had confirmed 377 Federal judges. He only had one of his nominees voted down. According to my numbers, there were 41 nominees pending that did not get confirmed before he left office. That is a traditional number. There were 67 vacancies, but there were 41 nominees; he did not have nominees for the difference. So under Senator Hatch's leadership, when the Republicans had the majority in the committee, the Clinton nominees were scrutinized, they were examined, and, for the most part, they got through. Last fall, at the time we left--and in the last months of the Clinton administration--we constantly heard a drumbeat of complaints that the 60-or-so vacancy level that was pending out there in the courts was jeopardizing justice in America. The truth is, you are going to have around 60 vacancies at all times. It takes a while for the President to decide who to nominate. There has to be an FBI background check. They have to get the nominees to fill out all kinds of questionnaires to make sure there is not something bad in their record. As I say, the FBI does a background check. The ABA does a background check. The nominees are sent over here to the Judiciary Committee and are given a big questionnaire, which they have to fill out. Historically, we have seldom been below having 60 vacancies for judges. Now we are at about 110. And the very people who were on this floor last year, screaming mightily that 60, 67 was an outrage, are now suggesting they have no problem with 110. In my district, the southern district of Alabama, we have a three- court district where I was a U.S. Attorney for 12 years. I practiced there before Federal judges. Really, it was for 15 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and a U.S. Attorney before Federal judges. They have a three-judge court. They only have one judge. There are two vacancies there. So we have some problems around the country that need to be dealt with. Here we are, and we are asked: What can you do about it? On the Judiciary Committee, President Bush's party, the Republican party, does not have a majority, so it cannot call hearings. It cannot force hearings. It cannot force votes. We are at the pleasure of the chairman and the majority. What we have seen is a systematic slowdown, consistent with the public statements that have been made previously of what they were going to do. That is beginning to put a crunch on the judiciary and really hurt justice in America. It is legitimate and proper that this matter be raised here in this Senate Chamber. Some say: Well, don't play politics with the foreign operations bill. You are playing politics with that. Let me just say it this way: Let's have a fair movement of President Bush's qualified judges. Let's see them move forward at a fair rate. They say: Well, you cannot complain about that. You cannot do anything about it. You cannot utilize any of the rules that are available to you Republicans because if you do, you are partisan. But we can sit on judges. We can delay hearings in the judiciary. And we can delay confirmations, but that is not partisan. We are getting close to the end of this session, and we are way behind where we need to be. Nobody, in my view, can dispute that. Nobody can dispute we have a growing vacancy problem in the courts. It is time for us to confront it. We have written letters to the chairman. We have talked to the majority leader. We have asked and asked for their help, and we are not getting it. So I do not think it is fair to say, those who have asked respectfully and urged movement of the judges in a fair and legitimate way, that we ought to be accused of being partisan. By the way, the foreign operations funding is operating under a continuing resolution. We are not shutting off funding for that. But what we are saying is that this is serious business. Moving judges is serious business. We want your attention, majority in the Senate, slim though it may be. We want your attention. We want your focus on judges. It is important to America. And we have a legitimate concern in that regard; and we are asking for that. Just a year ago, the then-minority leader, Tom Daschle, in July made a statement about moving the intelligence authorization bill. In recent weeks we have learned about how important the intelligence community is. The intelligence bill was on the floor, and in a nice way that the then-minority leader had to express himself; this is what he said: I also hope we can address the additional appropriations bills. There is no reason we can't. We can find a compromise if there is a will, and I am sure there is. But we also want to see the list of what we expect will probably be the final list of judicial nominees to be considered for hearings in the Judiciary Committee this year. I am anxious to talk with him [Trent Lott, the then-majority leader] and work with him on that issue. All of this is interrelated, as he said, and because of that, we take it slowly. In other words, that was a nice way of saying, from Mr. Daschle, that they were not going to move the intelligence authorization. He was not going to move that legislation until he got a commitment from the majority leader on judges. He wanted to know how many were going to be confirmed before the session ended. Sometimes those things occur. The minority in the Senate has the power to block consideration of bills. That is what he was doing at that time. That is basically what we are saying today. We are going to stop this legislation until we get some sort of good-faith commitment to move judges forward at this point in time. They say we didn't have any nominees in the first 6 months. The President of the United States has a lot to do in the first 6 months. He has to fill his Cabinet, his subcabinet, organize his government, working night and day, and submit judges. By May, President Bush had submitted a stellar list of judges, including at least three Democrats. What has happened on that? Three Democrats have had hearings and been confirmed. They found time for those. Seven out of the 18 have had hearings. They were nominated in May. Their backgrounds are sterling. It was a bipartisan blue ribbon group of nominees. The President reached out. He nominated one nominee that had been blocked by the Senate and had been held up. He renominated one of President Clinton's nominees as an act of good faith, to reach out. So what has happened? We have had confirmation of the three Democrats. We have had hearings on 7, and 11 of those nominated back in May have not even had a hearing. That is beyond the pale. That is unjustified. Since then, additional nominees have come forward for which there is no objection. Many of those nominees have been blessed already by the home State Democratic Senator. Many of them, the Republican Senators have all signed off on. They are ready to go, many of them, with no objection whatsoever. Their background checks are clean, and they are ready to go forward. We just need to have a hearing. We can't move a judge under our rules until the judge has been given a hearing. Any Senator has the right to ask them questions. I don't think this Senate should be a rubber stamp. They ought to be able to ask questions and examine their backgrounds and records. If they are not comfortable with it, vote no. But President Bush has given us a group of nominees that are mainstream superior judges and will do a great job on the bench. He is entitled to the same support and movement of his judges as President Clinton received. They say we have a lot to do. We should not worry about judges and just pass the appropriations bill for foreign operations. We are just too busy to do this. We have a chart that shows how many judges have been put up per hearing before the Judiciary Committee. This chart is revealing. In 1998, judicial nominees per hearing averaged 4.2; in 1999, 4.2; in 2000, 4.2. That is 4.2 judges up each time we had a hearing. In 2001, that number has dropped. There has been some dispute about it, but there is no dispute that it is half what it was before. One of the things happening is, when we have a hearing, we are not putting as many judges on the panel. We can do three, four, five, six at one time, if we want to. We can all be able to ask them questions if we want to. But if you hold the number of judges per hearing down, you are not moving many judges forward. That is a critical event that has gotten us as far behind in the scale as we are today. Again, I know a lot has happened this year. Perhaps there is some basis for the complaint, the excuse, or the reason we have not moved forward is that a lot of things have happened. But if we were just to get our hearings moving, we would not be in this crisis. We have been warning on our side that this was happening. We have been asking in a respectful way and received little or no attention to the matter. I believe our complaint is legitimate. I believe it is our duty to ask the majority leader and the chairman of the judiciary to reevaluate what they are doing, to sit down and plan some hearings for these judges and give us a commitment that they are going to move forward. If we don't, we will end up when we recess--and maybe we will recess earlier than normal this year; many hope so--without moving anything like the number of judges that we should. It has been stated that a substantial portion of the judicial nominees pending in committee do not have all their paperwork completed. However, almost 30 have everything in, including their ABA rating, and there is no reason for us not to move on those. We have at least 30 that have every bit of their paperwork done. We haven't been moving those. The President made 18 nominations in May; 11 of them that have not even had a hearing and their paperwork is in. Why is it that we are not able to move effectively? Unfortunately, it appears to be consistent with what we learned in the New York Times article. At the Democratic retreat they had a meeting to plan to change the ground rules for confirmation of judges; in effect, to slow the process down, let the vacancies grow, even though last year they were saying just the opposite. I will share with you some of the comments we had last year. When there were 76 vacancies--now we have 108, 109--when there were 76 vacancies, the now majority leader stated: The failure to fill these vacancies is straining our Federal court system and delaying justice for all people across this country. That was last year when we had 76 vacancies. Just 2 years ago, when the vacancies numbered in the sixties, Senator Leahy, then ranking member, now chairman of Judiciary said: We must redouble our effort to work with the President to end the longstanding vacancies that plague the Federal courts and disadvantage all Americans. That is our constitutional responsibility. Well, the Senate's pace in moving nominations this year is far behind the pace during the first years of both Reagan and Bush 1 and the Clinton administrations. For example, in the first year of President Reagan's administration, there were 40 confirmations to the Federal bench. Under former President Bush's administration, there were 15 confirmations. Under President Clinton's administration, the first year, 28 confirmations. At this point, we have confirmed eight, and we have maybe a month left in this session. At the rate we are going, we are not going to get close to what was a national average of the last three administrations of 28 judges in the first year. In fact, with regard to the nomination process, in the first year of each of those Presidents' administrations, every person who was nominated before the August recess was confirmed that first year, except one. This is a chart that demonstrates that quite clearly. During the Reagan administration, all of his nominees who were sent to the Senate before the August recess--they gave us a whole month to work on the paperwork and review it--every one was confirmed. Under former President Bush, the same occurred. Every nominee he sent forward to this Senate before the August recess was confirmed. Under President Clinton, 93 percent of his were confirmed who were submitted before the August recess. Only one of his was not confirmed. Under the now- President Bush, only 18 percent of his have been confirmed to date. So we are just heading on a collision course to a situation that is going to leave the courts shorthanded. If we don't recognize it, we are acquiescing in what could be a deliberate plan to slow down the confirmation of judges, even though last year--less than a year ago-- the people who are involved in that now were decrying that as unacceptable; it was unacceptable to keep the confirmations low. One more time, let's review these numbers because I don't think anyone should think that the reason we are here is light or insignificant. The reason we are here talking about these issues is that they are important. In the 103rd Congress, under President Clinton--and he had a Democratic majority in the Judiciary Committee--there were 63 vacancies there. In the 104th Congress, 2 years later, at the end of President Clinton's first term there were 65 vacancies. In the 105th Congress, with Chairman Orrin Hatch's leadership there were 50 vacancies. Senator Hatch had reduced vacancies to 50. In the 106th Congress, the last years of President Clinton's term, the vacancies were 67, which is, as you can see, pretty mainstream. But now we have 110 vacancies without an extraordinary game plan in the Judiciary Committee to have hearings and move judges forward. At the rate we are going, the resignations are going to exceed the nominations and confirmations. That is not a healthy thing for our judiciary. Mr. President, I feel strongly about the issue. I know there are pressures on all of us. We have groups out there that used to try to pressure Chairman Hatch and tell him how to run the Judiciary Committee. He took the view that: If you want to get elected to the Senate, you can run the committee; otherwise, I am going to give hearings a fair shot and do what I think is right and move nominees. I know pressure is out there. I think it is time for us to get serious on this matter, to move nominees forward, give President Bush's nominees a fair chance to be confirmed, to reduce this extraordinary backlog of vacancies that are out there --to have hearings on those 11 judges who were nominated in May because they have not even had a hearing yet--and get busy with filling our responsibility to advise and consent or reject President Bush's nominees. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to share a few thoughts with regard to the process of nominating and confirming Federal judges. We have had a problem, as I have seen it, in recent months, leaving us with an ever-growing backlog, one of the largest backlogs of judicial vacancies we have ever had. I would like to share a few thoughts about that. One of the bases for rationalizing this apparent slowdown is the view that President Clinton's judges were not treated fairly. Many of you have heard that. I think we ought to talk about that straight up. President Clinton nominated and got confirmed 377 Federal judges, almost exactly the number President Reagan had in his 8 years in office. They both had 8 years in office. He had one of his nominees, only one, who was voted down by this Senate. The rest we either confirmed or were pending when he left office. When President Clinton left office, he had 41 nominees pending before this Senate, nominees who had not been acted upon. Historically, that is a low number. Under the leadership of Chairman Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Utah, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee at that time, a Republican, he moved President Clinton's nominees effectively and gave them fair hearings, and for the most part they were promptly confirmed if they were deserving. That 41 nominees were unconfirmed is a rather low number, in my view. Really, 67 vacancies were in existence at that time in the Federal judiciary. We have over 800 Federal judges, and 60-some judges has generally been considered a normal vacancy rate. It just about takes that much time for the names to go up to the President, for him to consider them, an FBI background check to be done, to submit the nominee's name, they answer all the questionnaires we demand of them, ABA does a background check--and it just takes some time. So you seldom will be below 50 vacancies in the Federal judiciary. However, we begin to see the numbers increase dramatically. Just a few days ago we had 110 vacancies in the Federal judiciary. Now I think it is 108 after the confirmation of the 2. To me, this is too large a vacancy. Let me tell you why I am concerned about it. I will be frank with you about it. The reason I am concerned is that there is a sense in which this slowdown in confirmations is a part of a plan to block President Bush's nominees in an unusual and special way. Unlike anything we have seen before. There was a report in the New York Times on April 30 of this year reporting about the private retreat the Democratic Members of this body had. The Republicans have those retreats, too. At that retreat, Professor Laurence Tribe, who is well known, Cass Sunstein, and Marcia Greenberger discussed with the Democratic Senators their idea to develop a ``unified party strategy to combat the White House on judicial nominees.'' That was the New York Times reporting on that conference. Professor Tribe and the others apparently advocated scrutinizing nominees more closely than ever in order to slow down the nomination process, stating that it was: . . . important for the Senate to change the ground rules and there was no obligation to confirm someone just because they are scholarly and erudite. This is the same Laurence Tribe who was very active in the Bork nomination and Thomas nomination fight and actually wrote a book in 1985 titled ``God Save This Honorable Court'' in which he talked about the strategy of blocking judicial nominations. Before we had gotten started in this process, those of us on this side had cause for concern because there was a stated policy of changing the ground rules or to block President Bush's constitutional ability to have his nominees treated fairly and confirmed, if fit and qualified. Subsequent to that, we began to have a number of hearings in the courts subcommittee, of which I am the ranking Republican member. The first hearing dealt with a suggested change in how we ought to do nominations. The change and question was whether or not ideology should be considered in the judicial process. That has been generally rejected consistently. Invited to testify on that panel were Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe, and Marcia Greenberger--surprise, surprise. Also invited to testify was Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to a Democratic President, and a man of great respect in the community. In his remarks, he differed with those other professors, however, and made clear that he opposed--and quoted a commission of which he was a member--making politics and ideology a factor in the confirmation process. If someone has an obsessive political or personal or ideological view that would keep them from being objective in analyzing facts and law, they ought not to be confirmed. But just to say that you are a liberal Democrat--as overwhelmingly the 377 judges confirmed by President Clinton were--that you are, therefore, not qualified, or if you are a conservative Republican you are not qualified to serve on the bench would be a historic change in the ground rules all right--not a change they suggested ought to be done before President Bush took office but a change they suggest only after their President left office. We have a new President. So we are concerned about this. The first hearing was suggesting that we ought to have a higher role of politics in the judiciary. Lloyd Cutler, to his credit, and other professors who were members of that panel, also to their credit, were firmly opposed to politicizing the judiciary. It is a dangerous thing. I was a U.S. attorney for 12 years and assistant U.S. attorney for 2. Almost 15 years of my life was spent practicing law and trying cases full time before Federal judges. I didn't always agree with them, but I will say with great conviction that they were wonderful judges--men and women of integrity and ability who did things right. If you had the law on your side, you could be expected to prevail. If you went to court and said: I have cases that say this evidence is admissible, Your Honor; I have evidence that says their document is not required to be produced in this hearing, Your Honor, and if you could show the judge that, you could almost always count on them to rule correctly according to the law, whether they were Republicans or Democrats. This idea that somehow, if you are a liberal or a conservative, you are therefore going to allow that to affect your ability to control a courtroom and do justice to people is wrong and dangerous. And I am nervous that we would suggest to the American people that this is so. I do not believe it is. At one of our hearings recently, when I asked Senator Fred Thompson from Tennessee, a skilled lawyer, if he believed in his experience as a litigator that he could expect unfairness or a difference of views on issues simply because of who appointed the judge to the bench, he said he did not. His experience as a judge was normally expected to rule correctly on the law and the facts. Certainly that has been my experience over the years. Actually, I would add parenthetically that is one of the great reasons for our strength and health and economic prosperity as a nation. We have a rule of law. Whether you are a British corporation or a corporation from any nation in the world or a domestic corporation or an individual or a poor person or a rich person, we believe in the ideal and in the reality that person would receive equal justice under law. Indeed, those are the words chiseled and engraved into the front of the Supreme Court building across the street--``Equal Justice Under Law.'' That is the American-British--Anglo-American--legal ideal that we have adhered to effectively. Nations where that rule of law has been commonplace and followed have prospered. I have come to believe in recent years as I have gotten older that if you examine nations that are not doing well economically, that do not have freedom and the things we have, it is fundamentally because they lack a rule of law. You can't invest, you can't plan, and you can't develop a long-term goal for the future and save money today in order to expand your business tomorrow if everything is unstable, and if you have to pay off politicians and never know what the law is going to be. We are blessed with a rich heritage of law that is so valuable that we should never see it undermined. We must protect it. The last line of the great hymn is our liberty and respect of the law. The American people respect law. We must do that. We must further that, and not create this image by a bunch of politicians in a committee room suggesting that what goes on in courtrooms throughout America is political and not based on law and fact. That would undermine public respect for law. I believe that very deeply. I was sorry that we went off on that tack. It was a good hearing. The chairman was very fair and everybody got their say. It was probably a good thing to talk about it and get it out in the open. I don't dispute that. But I think it is important that we in this body do not suggest to the American people that politics affects the law out in the field in the courtrooms all over America because it, in my view, does not. The second hearing we had was on the burden of proof. It was suggested in these hearings that the burden of proof is on the nominees to prove somehow that they ought to be confirmed. That would be a big change in policy. I do not know what you are supposed to do. Are you supposed to come to a judiciary hearing with 100 of your best friends? What are you supposed to do? What we do know is that the process has served us pretty well over the years. The President of the United States gets to nominate Federal judges under the Constitution. He solicits information back from the district involved or the circuit that is involved. Names come up to the President. He evaluates them and decides whom he is going to nominate. They do a pretty good job, frankly, of asking around, finding out if there is any trouble in the person's background, would they make a good nominee. In my view, as the years have gone by, the President has been even more intent on getting people who will be good judges than people who might be political friends or things of that nature. So that goes up. The President tentatively selects a nominee. This is the person they would like to submit. They do their own checking around. Then they give it to the FBI, and they do an intensive, full field investigation. The agents interview anybody with whom that person has worked. They interview people who have litigated against them. They interview judges before whom they have practiced. Then they come back with an FBI report. They find out whether or not they have been arrested, whether or not they have had drug abuse problems, or any other problem they might have in their background. They will interview an ex-wife, people who may have a basis to complain, and they put that in the report. So the President has that report. Then he decides whether or not to submit the name. And that report is available to all of us in the Senate--only the Senators--in confidential form. We can go and examine that report. If we see something we do not like, even though the President has approved that person, we can oppose a nominee on that basis. So that is the way the system works. After the nominee hits the Senate, the Senate sends a big questionnaire to the nominee. First the President submits a big questionnaire to the nominee, and depending on the investments and the career of the nominee, the questionnaire can have hundreds of pages of responses to all these questions. Then we have another one from the Senate. That one is done. Then the ABA, the American Bar Association, goes out and does their background check. They talk to judges. They talk to lawyers. They talk to the president of the local bar association, the president of the ABA, the members of the ABA from that community. They talk to people who have litigated in intense situations with the nominee. That is an important factor. In the pit, in the depth, in the intensity of a big-time lawsuit, if the person has character flaws, they will usually show up. Most lawyers are pretty objective. They will fairly evaluate a person they have litigated against, and they will tell the ABA and the FBI what they think about them. So then the ABA makes their recommendations as to whether or not this nominee is ``qualified'' or ``exceptionally well qualified.'' I think that is a pretty good process. So I suggest it is not wise at that point to say: Mr. Nominee, after you have done all these things, it is your burden, as we sit up here as Senators, to convince us, after the tremendous career you may have had in the practice of law--maybe you have a well-qualified rating--you have to convince us to vote for you. I do not know how you do that. I think the record speaks for itself. Historically we have not had that as a standard. In fact, in the first 125 years of this country's existence we never even had hearings on the nominees. If something came up on a nominee that the Senate did not like, they could object, but they did not even have hearings on the nominee. I do not mind an objection to hearings; it is probably a healthy thing. The Senate should not be a rubber stamp. But also we should not put that burden on the nominee, after they have done all that, before they are confirmed. So, Madam President, we will also have another series of hearings that are designed to intensify a basis for opposition to President Bush's nominees, all of which I think is a dangerous direction. So I say all that as a matter of background. That is not myth. That is not an unfair characterization of where we are. There is a move, apparently, by some, to change the ground rules of confirmation. It has, apparently, already begun to infect our process. I have some charts in the Chamber I would like to show that depict where we are in terms of vacancies in the Federal courts today. In the 103rd Congress, there were 63 vacancies at this same time period. This was during a time when Senator Biden, a Democrat, chaired the Judiciary Committee. In the 104th Congress, there were 65 vacancies during this same time period. Senator Hatch was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. There were 65 vacancies. This was during President Clinton's administration. Then, with a Republican chairman, a Republican majority in the Senate, and a Democratic President, Chairman Hatch got the number down to 50 vacancies. Then in the 106th Congress, the last year of President Clinton's administration, there were 67 vacancies--just about the traditional average. In fact, historically they tend to be a little higher in the last year of an administration. But now, just a few months later, the vacancy rate has surged from 67 to 110. Perhaps it is 108 today after those confirmations, but that is an unhealthy trend. I believe President Bush and those who want to see him have a fair day for his judges have a right to be concerned in light of particularly the statements that they want to change our ground rules. One of the things we have found, as we have looked at the process, is that the Senate, regardless of who is in the majority party, has done a good job of confirming judges who were nominated prior to August in that first year. In other words, from January through July, the President submits his nominees, as he can. It is a little difficult for him at first because he has a lot of people to appoint--he has a Cabinet to select, and new things are happening for the President in those first months--but, fundamentally, we have seen that the President has done very well with the nominees he has submitted. President Reagan, in his first year in office, was able to get every judge he nominated, prior to August, confirmed before the Senate recessed for the year in November or December. He had 100 percent confirmed. Former President Bush got 100 percent of his nominees confirmed during that time. President Clinton got 93 percent confirmed. I think there was one judge who did not get confirmed who was nominated before August. This was under President Clinton and a Republican Senate--well, maybe it was a Democrat Senate at that time. They did not confirm one, but all the rest were confirmed. But under this President, President Bush--and we are coming along to the end of this session; there are people saying we ought to be out of here in a month or less--has only gotten 18 percent of those judges confirmed. I know there have been some things that have happened that make it a little difficult, but, frankly, I think we ought to work a little harder. We have had a change of party, and we have had an attack on America that has disrupted us in many ways. But many of these nominees, you have to understand, are highly rated by the ABA. They are highly respected by their local men and women in the bar association, and no one objects to them. They have no objections against them. Republicans and Democrats back home support them. There is one from my district. She worked for me. She was hired as an assistant U.S. attorney under President Carter. She worked 12 years for me. Absolutely wonderful. She recently received a unanimous ``well qualified'' rating. She has no political agenda. A lot of these nominees are like that, just good lawyers, men and women of integrity and ability. They need to be moved forward. We could be a lot further along than we are today. One of the reasons we are behind is that we are not bringing enough of these noncontroversial judges, or any of the judges, forward at hearings on nominations. Under the heading ``judicial nominees per hearing,'' in 1998, they had 4.2 judges as the average number per hearing to be confirmed. We have a hearing in which the judge appears and answers any questions Senators might have. Later there is a vote within the committee whether or not to confirm. You can't have a vote in the committee until there has been a hearing to take information and question the nominee about anything anybody would like to ask. So the hearing is a critical step in getting confirmations. In 1999, it was 4.2. In 2000, it was 4.2.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the hard work of the Senator. Having served his country with great distinction in Vietnam, he certainly has the honor and the authority to lead us in a new relationship with that country. I hope it will succeed. I tend to believe that is one of the great characteristics of America, that we can move past conflicts. It is with some reluctance that I believe, because of this trade issue, that I ought to vote against it.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concerns with the United States-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and the problems that have been associated with Vietnamese fish that are displacing the American catfish industry. Just two days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's official, state-run media ran a story that stated, It's obvious that through this incident, Americans should take another look at themselves. If Americans had not pursued isolationism and chauvinism, and if they had not insisted on imposing their values on others in their own subjective manner, then perhaps the twin towers would still be standing together in the singing waves and breeze of the Atlantic. I think that is indicative of the fact that the Vietnamese Government does not have a friendly view of the United States. We aren't imposing our views on people around the world. They are trying to impose their views on us. We have been attacked for it. I am offended by that. I think the American people ought to know that. The President said these nations ought to choose whether they are for us or against us with regard to eliminating terrorism. I wasn't pleased with that comment from Vietnam. I want to make the note that they are apparently attempting to move in some direction toward a market economy, which I celebrate. Although we had a long and bitter and difficult war with them, I certainly believe that we can move beyond that conflict and that we can work together in the future. But comments such as the one I just read are not a way to build bridges between our nations. A nation that considers itself responsible should not make a statement like that at the very same time they are asking for trade benefits with this country. We know what this will amount to. It will amount to the fact that they will sell a lot more in the United States than they will buy from us. That is the way it works on these trade agreements. I am sure we have that today with China. We find that for every one dollar China buys from us, the United States buys four dollars from them. But I want to talk about this specific issue. It is frustrating to me. Since 1997, the import volume of frozen fish filets from Vietnam that are imported and sold as ``catfish'' has increased at incredibly high rates. The volume has risen from less than 500,000 pounds to over 7 million pounds per year in the previous three years. The trend has continued this year-the-Vietnamese penetration into the U.S. catfish filet market alone has tripled in the last year from about 7 percent of the market to 23 percent. The Vietnamese are selling their product in the U.S. for $1.25 less than U.S. processors. Because of this, the prices that U.S. processors pay U.S. catfish farmers has dropped, causing significant losses and threatening farmers, processors, supplying feed mills, employees and communities dependent on the industry. U.S. catfish farm production, which occurs mainly in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana, accounts for 68 percent of the pounds of fish sold and 50 percent of the total value of all U.S. aquaculture, or fish farming, production. That is a remarkable figure. Sixty-eight percent of the poundage of fish produced by aquaculture are catfish produced mainly in my State and others in the region. The area where most of our catfish production comes from is an area of the State in which I was raised. That is, indeed, the poorest area of Alabama. We have very few cash-producing sources of income in that area of the State. Much of it has been lost. But there has been a bright spot in catfish--both in production of ponds, the scientific research, the feed mills and the processing of it. It produces quite a little spurt of positive economic growth in this very poor industry. Seventy-five percent of the employees--I have been told--at these processing plants are single mothers. That is where many of them get their first job. Catfish farming is a significant industry for many areas of our country. The problem is this: The fish that the Vietnamese are importing which are displacing U.S.-raised catfish are not catfish at all. They are basa fish, which are not even of the same family, genus, or species of North American channel catfish. They do not even look like North American channel catfish. These basa fish are being shipped into the United States and labeled as catfish. These labels claim that the frozen fish filets are Cajun catfish, implying they are from the Mississippi Delta or from Louisiana. In fact, they are from the Mekong Delta in South Vietnam. As a result, American consumers believe they are purchasing and eating United States farm-raised catfish when they are, in fact, eating Vietnamese basa. Indeed, for some American people, who are not used to catfish, there has been an odd reluctance--I guess I can understand it--to eating catfish. The name of it makes them a bit uneasy. They wonder about eating catfish. But the American catfish industry has gradually, over a period of years, been able to wear down that image and show that catfish is one of the absolutely finest fish you can eat. It is a delight. And more and more people are eating it. The American catfish industry has invested a long time in creating a market for which no market ever existed before. And now we have the Vietnamese shipping in a substantial amount--and it is continuing to grow at record levels--of what is not even catfish, and marketing it under the name of American catfish, a product that has been improved and has gained support throughout our country. So it really is a fraudulent deal. Also, the Vietnamese basa fish are raised in conditions that are substantially different from the way that United States catfish are raised and processed. I remember, as a young person, the Ezell Catfish House on the Tombigbee River. The fish were caught out of the river and sold there. Really the Ezell family was key to the beginning of catfish popularity. But people felt better about pond-raised catfish because the water is cleaner and there is less likelihood there would be the pollutants that would be in the river. So when you buy American catfish in a restaurant, overwhelmingly, 99 percent is pond-raised catfish. It is clean and well managed, according to high American standards. That is not true of Vietnamese basa fish. These fish come out of the Mekong River. Most of these fish in Vietnam are grown in floating cages, under the fishermen's homes, along the Mekong River. They are able to produce fish at a low cost because of cheap labor, loose environmental regulations, and other regulations. I understand that the workers in Vietnamese processing plants are paid one dollar a day. And unlike other imported fish, such as tilapia or orange roughy, these fish are imported as an intended substitute for American farm-raised catfish. A group of Alabama catfish farmers visited Vietnam last November and toured a number of the basa farms and processing plants. They witnessed the use of chemicals that have been banned in the United States for over 20 years, the use of human and animal waste as feed, and temperatures in processing plants too warm to ensure the freshness of the fish being processed there. These fish, of questionable quality, are being sent in record numbers to the United States and are fraudulently labeled as catfish. If the Vietnamese were raising North American channel catfish of good quality and importing them into the United States, I could understand that. That would be fair trade. But fair trade is not importing basa fish, labeling them as catfish, and passing them off to American consumers as a quality pond-raised and processed catfish. But there are some things our Federal Government can do to enforce and clarify our existing laws. So I am pleased today to join with Senator Hutchinson and Senator Lincoln, and others, to introduce legislation that will eliminate the use of the word ``catfish'' with any species that are not North American catfish. This small step will help clarify FDA regulations and lessen consumer confusion. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal agency charged with protecting the safety of the American food supply, can begin inspecting more packages as they come into the United States to ensure that they are labeled in a legal manner. The FDA, the Customs Service, and the Justice Department need to vigorously pursue criminal violations in this regard, if appropriate. Currently, the FDA allows at least five violations before they will take any enforcement action beyond a letter of reprimand to the company importing the mislabeled fish. That does not make good sense to me. The FDA allows an astounding number of violations before they do anything. So I encourage the FDA, the Customs Service, and the Justice Department to take every step they can in these matters. I am disappointed there are no provisions in this trade agreement to address the problems of the catfish industry. While this trade agreement is not amendable--and I understand that--I want to take the opportunity while the Senate is considering this agreement to express my concerns for the way the Vietnamese fish industry is confusing American consumers and causing economic hardship in my State and others. For these reasons, I expect, Mr. President, to vote against this agreement. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. But it would alter current law. Under current law, the plan has been for Prison Industries to produce products for sale to the Federal Government thereby improving prison conditions and receiving some financial benefit to the prison.

Mr. SESSIONS. I would like to have a chance for opening comments, perhaps 10 minutes for that, whenever it is appropriate.

Mr. SESSIONS. I defer to the ranking member.

Mr. SESSIONS. I am pleased to yield.

Mr. SESSIONS. I understand the Senator's concerns and frustrations. We have been on this less than 2 full days. This is a major bill. Maybe we can get the agreement soon. I will certainly help him in that regard, if I can.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am pleased to express my appreciation to Senator Levin and Senator Warner and to all others who have worked very hard to make sure we complete our work in this Chamber in a bipartisan way. We were very close to doing that on almost every issue that has come before us. But one issue did divide us; that was national missile defense. And Senator Reed is one of the most knowledgeable and articulate spokesmen concerning that issue. In my subcommittee, of which I am ranking member, I think Senator Kennedy and I were able to reach an agreement on issues pertinent to seapower that both of us felt good about. It was not perfect; it was not what we would like; but with the money that we were allocated to spend on seapower, I think we did a good job. Our problems simply were the lack of money and resources. And, indeed, I will mention a few things that we were missing as a result of that. President Bush campaigned that he would improve the situation for our defense people and our defense budget and do some things that needed to be done. If you look at his budget, it represents an historic improvement and increase in defense. This appropriations bill we are voting out today totals $328 billion. Last year, we were at $296 billion. That is a $30 billion increase, plus a $6 billion supplemental we passed. It means a $38 billion increase in defense this year over last year. That is the biggest increase in probably 15 years in defense. It represents a long overdue step. It was done before we had these terrorist attacks. And it represented a consensus by the administration and their representation to the Congress on the needs of our defense budget. So we made a big step forward, and we are happy about that. We spent a good deal of that money on a number of things, such as a 5-percent pay raise for our men and women in uniform, which is tacked on to last year's increase--well above the inflation rate; 6- to 10-percent pay raises for people in critical positions; a $232 million increase in the housing allowance for families--increased funding for housing--an increase for national missile defense, and a number of other increases. So we are proud of those things. We are proud of the overall increase in the defense budget. However, our defense budget still, as a percentage of our GDP--our total gross domestic product--is far less than it was in the 1980s. At a time when we are seeing increased threats to our ability to function in the world as a result of terrorists and rogue nations, we are going to have to increase the budget in the years to come. The biggest thing we were not able to do in this budget--and the American people need to understand it--we did not make enough progress in recapitalization, replacing old and worn-out equipment such as tanks, aircraft, and ships; nor did we do enough in research and development of new equipment for the future. We did not make enough progress despite a very significant increase in defense spending this year. We are going to have--we approved the other day--an additional $20 billion for defense, most of which--virtually all of which will be spent for the terrorist problem we are now facing. With some of that, we will be able to strengthen our Defense Department for other issues, but most of it, indeed, will go to a terrorist response. That is not going to leave us in a significantly stronger position. If you count that, we are looking at a $58 billion increase over last year. From a financial point of view, we did pretty well. From a procurement point of view, most of us are somewhat concerned. For example, in the Seapower Subcommittee, of which I am ranking member, we were wrestling with a Navy that now has about 315 ships afloat out there. At one point in this country not too long ago, we were talking about a 600-ship Navy. Along with everything else, we have had a steady reduction in funding for ships. In this budget, we are going to have six new ships approved, which is good--they are expensive, every one of them--but that will not stop the decline. Our estimates from our Navy people are it takes eight to ten ships a year to maintain the current level of 315 ships. So we are still on a downward slope for ships. At some point, you just have to have a ship on the sea to be able to project American power in areas around the globe. You have to have a certain number. Many of them have to be in home port to be repaired. The sailors need to be home at various times. They need to respond to various crises in different places. It does not leave you that many ships to actually send to a given place at a given time when they are needed. Seapower is a good example of our inability to be as effective in procuring capital assets for our defense as we would like to be. I wish I had a more positive story to tell there, but I don't. One defense official recently said that it was like a bow wave in front of a ship, this procurement need. We are just pushing it in front of us. Sooner or later, we will have to confront it. Another defense official in the Clinton administration said we are in a death spiral. What he meant by that was, we are trying to keep afloat and keep operating equipment and airplanes and ships that need constant repair, and they are getting older and older. We would do better to purchase new, modern, more effective equipment that would not, perhaps, have as many personnel needed to operate it and could actually save us money in operation to a significant degree. Those are the issues with which we need to wrestle. Senator Reed is very knowledgeable and makes a number of points about national missile defense. It would be appropriate for me to respond to some degree on that. I will make a few points the items that concern me. We are not in perfect agreement on it. However, I do want to say how much I appreciate Senator Reed and Chairman Levin and Senator Warner, the ranking member, and Senator Allard, ranking member of the subcommittee, for their determination at this time of national crisis to reach an agreement on this issue and not to have us be in disagreement. They have accomplished that. They have done so in a way I can support. I believe it moves us in a direction that we needed to move. I am very proud we were able to have that occur. As it came out of committee, we split 13-12 on the budget for national missile defense. Let me relate a few things about it. President Clinton's budget for national missile defense this year, as he projected it, was approximately $5 billion. As President Bush campaigned, he told America he believed we needed to do more on national missile defense. Two and a half years ago, this Congress voted 97-3, I believe, to deploy a national missile defense system. As soon as technologically feasible, we would deploy a national missile defense system. Secretary Rumsfeld, when he was in the private sector, chaired a bipartisan commission, the Rumsfeld commission. They did a study to determine what kind of threat we faced from incoming missiles. The report was unanimous, the bipartisan commission was unanimous, that by 2005, this Nation could be subject to missile attack for which we have absolutely no defense at this time. The President recognized that. Later he chose Mr. Rumsfeld to be Secretary of Defense. When he came in, he proposed a $38 billion increase in the defense budget. He asked for $3 billion more for national missile defense, to go from $5 to $8 billion. We think that is a reasonable increase. It is a significant increase, but I believe--and I know Senator Warner and others believe-- this is the right thing for us to do. People say: Well, they may not have this missile that can reach us now. The commission said, by 2005, they could. If we are going to have a defense against it when they do have the capability of reaching us with missiles, we have to start today. This is not something about which we can do at a snap of our fingers. Of course, this administration will not, this Congress will not tolerate the deployment of a system that is not feasible, that won't work. We have to get started on building it. A $3 billion increase in national missile defense spending is a reasonable increase when that is the one gap we saw in our defense. Indeed, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, in his testimony, talked about the Gulf War. He said: If you look at the Gulf War, you could see that in many ways we overestimated our enemy's capability. And, in fact, we overestimated his capability in virtually every area except one. The one we did not consider enough was his ability to launch missiles, Scud missiles, if you remember, into our military bases and troops out in the field and into Israel and perhaps even destabilizing our relationship with Israel and causing consternation in our defense effort. So we rushed in the Patriot missile. It actually succeeded in knocking some of those Scuds down, but it was not designed for that and had not been ready to be deployed for that. It was rushed out as an emergency, and it worked to a degree. Since then, we realize we do have the capability to knock down an incoming missile. Some people almost think it is Star Wars and it can't be done, but we have had hearing after hearing after hearing on that subject. Both sides of the aisle agree it is technologically something that can be done. We have the ability to do it. It is just the question of when it ought to be deployed, I suppose; that is our disagreement. The American people need to realize that if, by 2005, Iran or Pakistan, any nation, Iraq, or North Korea continues their development or their purchase of missiles, they could have the ability to reach us with a missile, and we have no defense to that whatsoever. You say we have theater missile defense, but it cannot be deployed around this country in a way that would protect us as a national missile defense. Why is that, under present circumstances? The reason for that is, in 1972 we entered into an ABM treaty, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, with the Soviets. At that time, we both had the capability to destroy each other many times over with our missiles. Both of us, in the 1970s, were thinking about a national missile defense program. So somebody finally, I guess, got our nations to start thinking that this is really not good for either one of us. Why should we invest billions of dollars in a system that will not really protect us from the overwhelming force of the other. So we signed the treaty. It, flat out, said that we will not deploy a national missile defense. The treaty is not but two or three pages. The first article says: We will not build a national missile defense. People have said we don't need to get out of this treaty. Well, if we are going to build a national missile defense, we do have to get out of it. What if the Russians don't agree? We are threatened now from a multitude of nations. We want to have a friendly relationship with Russia. I pray we don't have a threat from Russia. I hope that our relationship will get even better with Russia. But we have a bunch of nations out there--and if anybody had any doubts about it, they didn't after September 11--who wish us ill. If they had the capability of launching missiles and hitting Los Angeles, New York, Miami, or some other American city and can kill millions of American people, then we are not safe in this world. We have the ability to do this, and it is time for us to get busy about it. No great nation ought to leave itself vulnerable. Indeed, Henry Kissinger, an architect of the ABM Treaty, was quoted. He talked about the new circumstances we are in. He said: I have never heard of a nation whose policy it is to keep itself vulnerable to attack. That is what we are basically talking about. We are having a policy by trying to adhere to a treaty with a dead empire, the Soviet Union-- it wasn't even with the Russia of today. Many legal scholars say we are not even required to abide by it because it is not with a legal entity that exists today. So we need to get out of that treaty. The Russians want to extract compromises from us, and we all understand that. So the President deals with them and works and increases our relationship with Russia, and the mutual interests get furthered. I thought we were on the road to making an agreement with the Russians. They have said some things that indicate they would agree. The Europeans, after initially being opposed, have warmed up to the idea quite considerably. About the only place left that we are having problems with is the U.S. Senate. The House is on board with this, but we are still having some problems here. So there was language in this bill--and the reason I and others voted against it when it came out of committee--which said that if the Russians didn't agree to allow us to build a national missile defense, the President could not go forward, but had to come back to Congress and ask for a vote. Whereas, under the ABM treaty, the President has personal unilateral power to wipe out the treaty. But if they did agree, the President could go forward. To me, that is an odd thing for the Congress to do-- to cede our power to build a national missile defense system to the Russians, to have them have a veto over whether or not we have a missile system deployed. I don't think that was good. I am glad that this compromise language came out. I am very, very happy that it came out. It is something I don't think we should have done. As a former Federal lawyer, I think about the legal situation here. The treaty prohibits us from deploying a national missile defense system, which would include deploying the radar systems, perhaps, out there that support one. It prohibits us from developing or testing a sea-based or mobile system of any kind, which is precisely what we need to be doing now. As a lawyer, it seems to me that when the Senate votes 97-3 to deploy a national missile defense system, the President of the United States at that time, President Clinton, signed that legislation, and the President of the United States today, President Bush, campaigns on developing and deploying one, and we are funding the money to carry one out, we ought to be honest enough to say we are moving to contradiction of the treaty, if we have not already. We have the intent to deploy a national missile defense system, which is contrary to the treaty. So the President either has to get out of it, or the Russians need to agree to that. Hopefully, they will agree. If not, we need to move on because we have to protect ourselves. We can't let a 1972 treaty with an empire that no longer exists prohibit us from protecting ourselves from other nations around this world who have the ability to launch missiles that could hit us. It is just that simple. I hope and believe I can support the language that is in the bill. I salute those who worked hard to make it acceptable. I will just mention a couple of things in general about this legislation. Secretary Rumsfeld is committed to transforming our military. Certainly, the events of September 11 should make us doubly committed to that goal. The old system of defending against a Soviet attack on the planes of Europe is not what our threat is today. We need a transformation that has more mobility, the ability to move our equipment, to disembark it around the globe. This is what the transformation plan was about that he has pushed, which was in discussion and agreement, really, by all of us before September 11. It was that we be more mobile, have more agility, that the weapons systems and equipment we use have more abilities to perform different functions. It would be more lethal with the smart bombs and those kinds of things. A single round, a single bomb, could be much more directed and effective in its attack. We needed better surveillance and reconnaissance and intelligence information, and we need a modernized command and control system. Those were the goals of transformation. I believe this legislation supports that, although perhaps not as much as I would like. I would like to believe that the quadrennial defense review coming out of the Department of Defense within a few weeks, and Secretary Rumsfeld's own internal review, will further push our services to go forward to a transformation to a world that is quite different than the one we have had--particularly against asymmetric threats. I am concerned that we may not have enough money in this budget for smart weapons of all kinds--the kinds we saw in Kosovo that could go in the window of a building. We need an adequate supply of those weapons, but the new funding--the $20 billion we approved--should be able to fill those needs. But we have to watch to make sure we have a sufficient supply of those. I don't think we have been operating at the level we should. We are closer to minimum sustaining rates for production of those kinds of weapons; whereas, we could get the weapons cheaper if we increase the production level. I thank Chairman Levin for his leadership and dedication, and I particularly thank Senator Warner, the ranking member, whose advice and wisdom I have called on frequently and value highly. I believe we have a bill here that is good. But we remain challenged as a nation. Our challenge remains that we have to consider how much more we are going to need for defense, because this remains a dangerous world.

Mr. SESSIONS. I remember not too many years ago that I met an individual who I had prosecuted as a Federal prosecutor. He served a number of years in jail and was a former elected public official. We got to talking about this very subject. He said to me: If you need a witness, call me because I have been in prison where prisoners work, and I have been in prisons where they don't work. And it is a lot better where they are working. It is when you go to the chow line at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, there are no fights, and no shoving or pushing. People are tired and want to get their food and go to the cell and go to bed. It is a tough call for me because I believe in competition. And I am wrestling with this vote. I understand the Senator's concern about it. But I believe deeply that we have to ensure that prisoners work. There are forces out there that want to shut it off at every angle. But at some point we need these prisoners working, for their benefit and for America's benefit. I don't know how they can't be competitive with the advantages they have. That is why I am thinking I could support the Senator's amendment on the theory that they would probably tighten things up and get competitive if it passed. But they certainly need to work. I thank the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I object.

Mr. SESSIONS. I understand there are still those who wish to continue debate and who have not been prepared to agree to that on this side-- maybe somebody on this side. We have had this frustration ever since I have been in the Senate. We have been on the other side as the majority. But maybe we can get this thing moving. I certainly would like to see this bill move. I would not personally object. I am objecting for others who, I understand, have a right to object and have asked that I do so. I certainly will do what I can to see this bill move. I hope we can reach an agreement soon.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask the distinguished chairman: But it does change current law to provide for additional competitive strictures on the Federal prison system. Is that correct?

Mr. SESSIONS

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