Fred Thompson

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Madam President, I welcome the opportunity, while I have two of my close friends and respected Members who are sponsoring this amendment here on the floor, to hopefully enter into a discussion under the rules of the Senate and with the consent of our colleagues as to some of the details of this proposal, as to what is intended, as to what we are trying to accomplish, and as to whether or not this is the best way to accomplish it. I commend my colleagues for their effort. I think they have had for a long time the idea of a commission--a long time before a lot of other people who are now calling for one. They have had this vision. Quite frankly, I have tried to keep an open mind with regard to the wisdom of it. I sit on the Intelligence Committee. Right now, we are having bipartisan and bicameral hearings with regard to many issues, some of which have to do with 9/11. I ask my colleagues--either or both of them--how they view the role of the commission with regard to the intelligence issues. I am wondering whether we could probe very deeply and successfully into what happened with regard to 9/11, including any intelligence breakdown, and still come away with a not very good analysis of the difficulties we are having in the intelligence community. Is it the best thing to do to have a commission that has a rather broad mandate with regard to anything and everything and at any level of Government with regard to September 11 of which intelligence would be a part? Is that better than maybe a deeper probe that is more narrowly focused with regard to our intelligence failures? Because most of us believe that is at the heart of the difficulties we saw in relation to September 11. I have had the opportunity to read the amendment once. I notice the functions of the commission are to conduct investigations that may include relevant facts relating to intelligence agencies. But ``intelligence agencies'' is mentioned, along with a lot of other agencies: ``law enforcement agencies;'' ``immigration, nonimmigrant visas, and border control;'' ``the flow of assets to terrorist organizations;'' and other areas of concern that are not agencies, such as ``commercial aviation'' and ``diplomacy.'' I am not sure what that means. But I would ask my colleagues what went into their thinking, what is the state of their thinking with regard to that issue. Is it best to have the broader scope that might trip lightly over intelligence issues? Would that be better than having a more detailed and narrow inquiry as to intelligence failures? I would ask my friend from Arizona what his thinking is with regard to that.

Mr. THOMPSON. I appreciate that very much. I would ask, just narrowing down a little bit more, how do my colleagues see the work of this commission in relation to the work of the joint intelligence committee?

Mr. THOMPSON. I would say, in response, that I indeed have had that concern as that investigation has gone along. And we have seen the various problems we have had with it and the various difficulties we have had internally and externally, and with the time limitation we placed on ourselves in this intelligence investigation. And I was concerned a long time about where we were going to end up and whether we were going to be in a position of assuring the American people that we had done more than we had really done. I will have more to say on that later. I still want to keep my powder as dry as I can for as long as I can because it is ongoing and hope springs eternal. But I certainly do have concern about that, which gets me back to my original concern about where intelligence ought to play in this inquiry. I appreciate the Senator's reassurance with regard to that, and its importance and, perhaps, central function, central role. But I wonder; it concerns me when I see that put together with immigration issues, and aviation issues, and diplomacy issues. For example, I would be interested and would like, if we could get the right kind of people and the right kind of objectivity, to have a session as to our policies with regard to reaction ever since the bombings in Beirut, to the attack on the USS Cole, to the events in Somalia, and all of that. What effect did all of that have on all of this? Did that embolden people around the world, who have ill intent toward us, to do some of these things? Those are very interesting, important issues. But can we take on all of that within--what do we have here?--a year's timeframe for this investigation?

Mr. THOMPSON. All right. Well, that is more than the Intelligence Committee has had. I must concede that. But the question really is, Can we do all of that? We are combining some things that would be very subjective, very politically sensitive. Hopefully, we will have the kind of people on this commission to be able the deal with that, along with some very detailed inquiry with regard to the intelligence community. Is that the best way to go? Can we really hope that at the end of the day we have been able to do all of that? That leads me to my second question, I suppose, and that is in regard to access to information. As I read through this, there is a provision for ``Information From Federal Agencies'' for this commission. On page 9 of the amendment, it says: The Commission is authorized to secure directly from any executive department, bureau, agency, board, commission, office, independent establishment, or instrumentality of the Government information, suggestions, estimates, and statistics for the purposes of this title. I am not sure that--let's just say for the purposes of this discussion--having access with regard to intelligence agencies, with regard to suggestions, estimates, and statistics would do us very much good. Now, the right kind of information would be helpful, but is the intent here that this commission will be able to go into these agencies, regardless of what they are? Also, you have another provision in here that provides for clearance and providing access to people with sensitive information. But is the intention to provide the members and/or staff of this agency with the authority and the ability to go into these agencies and to review the most sensitive information? I think back to the Rumsfeld Commission, which I think most people would agree was a very successful enterprise, dealing with issues of missile technology and nuclear capability of various countries, and so forth, very sensitive information. It was done successfully. A lot of these people were scientists and the same kind of people, perhaps, in many respects that your commission would adopt. They have done that very successfully. I am wondering if someone some months hence would read this document and say: We did not intend to do that. Whatever reports are out there, analyze those reports. But we didn't have any intention for you going in and really getting something that they didn't want to give you. I think that is relevant because apparently we still have to make the White House a believer that this is a good idea. I am wondering, in terms of the wording of the bill or legislative history, what would be the proper way to address that question.

Mr. THOMPSON. I thank my colleague. Does the Senator from New Jersey have a contribution to make?

Mr. THOMPSON. Do you provide for closed hearings?

Mr. THOMPSON. I say to my colleague, it seems to me the situation is basically this: We have concerns, some with regard to our intelligence community and our intelligence difficulties; some have to do with nonintelligence areas. We have talked about the area of diplomacy and action and reaction to attacks, for example. We have a committee that is about to wind up its work dealing with the intelligence area. I think many people are very concerned that they are not going to get to the heart of the issue. Your commission would come along and overlay that and take up where that leaves off but would have quite a bit broader mandate. It makes me wonder whether you really could pick up where they leave off and do the same kind of job they would have done had they been in business for a while longer, which leads me to the additional question: Has my friend considered--I haven't discussed this with anyone because it just occurred to me--whether or not it might be wise to extend the inquiry of the joint intelligence committee? We placed an end-of-the-year limitation on this. We had the first, I guess you might say, substantive public hearing yesterday. We know about how much longer we are going to be around here from a practical standpoint in terms of Members. I don't think anybody wants a result and a report that is totally staff driven. It is not even a permanent staff. It is a very good staff, assembled from various places. Some of us know who these people are and some of us don't. But on something this important, with this kind of time limitation, there is going to be an awful lot of uneasiness about all of that. I have some uneasiness about the ability of this commission to just pick up from there and go on, when we are considering these other broad categories that perhaps need to be considered, either in a commission or otherwise. I am not sure. But one of the things that occurs to me--I don't see why we would shy away from putting it on the table and talking about it--is perhaps extending the joint committee's work into next year.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, my colleague is very eloquent in the promotion of his cause, which is the creation of this commission. I appreciate the response of Senator Lieberman and Senator McCain to the concerns I have. I appreciate the offer they have made to work with us to see if we go in this direction and make sure we can put forth our best effort. I suppose I look at the whole endeavor a little bit differently than my friend from Connecticut. Probably the best reason for going forward with some additional activity, whether extension of the joint committee or creation of a new commissioner, is not necessarily because we can do something that will prevent future catastrophes. I wish we could. But there is too much hate and too much technology in the world to be able to ever guarantee our citizenry that we can do that. It is not that we can even resolve the issue. Tragedies have happened before in this country, and we are still debating what happened or what did not happen. It is a matter of doing what we can to find out what happened in the best way possible. It is a matter of simple justice. We owe it to the people involved. We owe it to the American people. We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to our world to do the best we can to do all those things to make it a little more preventable, to resolve key issues, do the best we can. It is the right thing to do. It is a matter of simple justice--not that there will be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I have become more realistic as I look into these things. When I hear about the ``connecting of the dots,'' we should have been able to connect these dots, or this is preventable, what I know is these dots were in a sea of dots, a veritable sea of dots. The problem we had with regard to September 11 is not just the fact we did not have the analytical capability there at that time, before that time, in order to put this together, but for a long time now we have lost our ability, analytically and technologically, to pull together these disparate facts. Technologically, we ought to be able to evaluate the disparate facts and put our computers to work and get analyses and estimates as to what is likely to happen. It will be a long, drawn-out deal. We did not get there overnight, and we will not get a solution to it overnight. Even if we do everything right, we are never going to be totally safe. There is too much hatred, too much fanaticism in the world, and too much high technology. It is too easy for those things to come together. We will have to be vigilant for the rest of our lives and the lives of our children and our grandchildren--and spend a lot of money and have a lot of effort. The idea that we can come together and have a little investigation or have a commission, and we can tell the American people and those tragic victims who lost loved ones, and imply we are going to find out exactly what happened, we will prevent this thing from happening again--I wish that were true. I don't think it will be. As I said, we need to do what we can. We need to do as much as we can. What we are struggling with is trying to determine the best way to do that and the best forum. We should not be afraid. People say it is not a blame game. Of course, it is a blame game, to a certain extent. Why shy away from assessing blame if there is blame to be assessed? We are talking almost 3,000 lives here. That is part of it. Prevention is a part of it. But also a very important part of it is doing what we can to assess the nature of the problem so that we are as strong as we can be--not that we can prevent any potential problem, but be as strong as we can be. That is what I think my friend is trying to do with this commission. I appreciate that effort. I want to continue to study this bill, this amendment. I want to talk to my friends who support this amendment between now and the time we vote. I want the opportunity to discuss our process with my colleagues. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I have been asked by Senator Hatch to request unanimous consent that Senator Schumer be removed as a cosponsor of amendment No. 4693.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. The lawyer part, anyway.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I think the question before us is whether we will move ahead with a comprehensive reorganization plan to reorganize in a way that will greater protect our country--a plan that is supported by the administration, a plan that was approved by the Governmental Affairs Committee, or whether we go in another direction that I believe Senator Lieberman is correct on, which would move us away and down the road toward delay. It would delay addressing the crucial questions that I think are before the Senate and the country with regard to how we best address our security in the future. By nature, I tend to want to agree with the Senator from West Virginia when he says that we sometimes move too rapidly and without due consideration with regard to certain important matters that come before this body. I agree with that. I agree with it as I watch amendments to appropriations bills come forth that have not been considered by committees; that have not been subject to committee hearings; that have hardly been debated on the floor, and spend tens of billions of dollars; that grant and take away broad ranges of authority, as amendments and bills are passing through because they are deemed to be convenient vehicles. We do that all the time, unfortunately. So what we have done with regard to this homeland security bill, in comparison to what we do on a regular basis, makes it look as if we are moving at a snail's pace--not too fast, but at a snail's pace--compared to the short shrift we give and the rapidity with which we pass sweeping amendments to these appropriations bills and other bills that come through here, circumventing the committee process as we do it. I imagine my friend, the Senator from Connecticut, believes it somewhat ironic that it is suggested he has been giving the administration a blank check on the one hand, when so many have accused his approach as being one of micromanaging what the administration is doing. I must agree with him that the suggestion that this is broad and sweeping, and the implication that it is somewhat unprecedented power to the administration, is unjustified. I think he is right when he talks about the creation of a new Department or the merging of departments or any other broad range of administration activity. The administration is a part of a separate branch of Government, after all. Any time we do that we are granting authority, but it is hardly a blank check. When we determine such things as there being a Secretary at the top who is answerable--and, first of all, confirmable--to this body, and is answerable under oversight, and creating under secretaries--there are, I believe, 17 individuals created by this legislation, if it passes, which are confirmable by this body, that is hardly granting broad, sweeping authority to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. As my friends from West Virginia and Connecticut were talking about which end of the avenue they trusted the most, I was beginning to fear that they were going to come to agreement on an important part of this debate, but it didn't quite happen. So I feel better about that. We have 17 confirmed positions in this bill, 6 directorates, pulling 22 agencies together, agencies that have already been created by this Congress, with their duties delineated. We give permission, as it were, for those to be brought together. We delineated in this bill the responsibilities of these directorates, the duties of these positions that we create. We are certainly not going to lose our oversight duties and responsibilities, if we choose to exercise them. We are certainly not going to circumvent the annual appropriations process. This bill does get into the details of our intelligence operations. Goodness knows we need improvement in that regard, and we can have a good debate as to how best to improve it. But when Congress in a bill gets down to the business of saying this particular information shall go here and this particular officer shall have the right to this officer's information and this particular information, and the President can step in here but he cannot step in there, that is hardly granting a blank check. One could argue we need to do more of that and get into the weeds even in more detail, but one can hardly argue we are creating a blank check and certainly one that is inconsistent with what we have done, I think, as a Congress many times in setting forth other important Departments. Reference has been made to the National Security Act, which was created in 1947. Congress acted then after due deliberation. I presume most folks think we went through the proper process and deliberated sufficiently before we created that agency in 1947. As I understand it, Congress has subsequently acted 43 times since then. So we should make no pretense whether we do it today or tomorrow or next year or 2 years from now that that is going to be the end of it. It is going to be the beginning of a process to do the best we can. Senator Lieberman said it well when he said: Our first best effort. The question gets back to one I posed in the beginning: Do we do it now or do we do it later? I have some difficulty with certain parts of the bill that came out of committee. I certainly cannot argue with the detail which addresses the seriousness of the component parts of this new agency that is being created. It is a 347-page bill. There is some other historic legislation that has been passed by this body that is a fraction of that amount. In sum and substance on that particular point, I will simply conclude that we are at least in the middle of the road in exercising our congressional authority in setting up a new Department as to whether or not we are having our say about how it is to be done versus just handing it over to the executive branch and saying: You fill in all the blanks. I respectfully submit the Congress has not done that. We get down to the practical proposition that this Congress has relatively few days remaining in this year. We all know we are not going to stay around here too much longer. It is an election year. We may be in the first week of next month; we may be in the second week of next month. Nobody knows exactly how much longer we have. We have several important pieces of legislation still pending which we have to address one way or another--appropriations bills, Defense appropriations. We are going to be considering an Iraq resolution. These are important issues, eminent issues that we cannot avoid, must not avoid, and we will not avoid. We will take up those issues. The question becomes, again, with regard to homeland security: Do we go ahead and consider these amendments and get on about our business, have a debate on these amendments and let everybody have their say on these amendments, fashioned the best we can, or do we put it over to next year and take it up again next year? Do we really want to go into next year, after having set aside the time to consider this, after about a year, since the start of hearings? Do we really want to conclude we want to put this bill off, in many respects, until next year? I do not think we want to conclude that, and that is what the adoption of the amendment that is the business before the Senate will do. We started the hearings process in the Governmental Affairs Committee on September 20 of last year. From September until June of this year, the committee held 18 hearings. So it is almost a year ago we started the hearing process with regard to this bill. It was almost a year before that very important commissions started telling us facts we did not really want to hear, and that was that we were in danger; that our country was vulnerable; that we needed to address the issue of terrorism; and that a part of the way we must address it had to do with the way our Government was organized. In December of 2000, the Gilmore Commission released its report. In February of 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission released its report. Of all the many positive aspects of this body, the most disturbing aspect is how many reports and warnings and how much information we have to get sometimes before it gets our attention. We could not get in this room all the GAO reports and commission reports and other similar reports and comments over the past few years telling us and warning us, generally speaking, of what was coming and what was looming out there, not to mention intelligence information, about which we might or might not be able to talk. Public bipartisan independent reports were coming in at least a year before we even started our hearings. So we have had the benefit of those reports. Would that we took that much time on other important issues facing our Nation as we pass amendments to appropriations bills left and right and hardly know on what we are voting, issues on which we have had no hearings, on which we have had no committee action, and we do it helter-skelter sometimes. Compare that to the process we have been through with regard to this issue. So we are here at the end of that time and we are on the bill. We are facing important issues with regard to this bill. We have considered one of them: the question of whether or not the person who is going to be in the White House is going to be Senate confirmed or not. We had a vote on that. The Senate expressed its opinion, expressed its will on that issue in a pretty convincing fashion, in essentially a bipartisan vote. We decided that would not be a position subject to Senate confirmation because we were creating a new Secretary who was going to be subject to Senate confirmation, and we did not need that duality. The President deserved counsel inside the White House separate and apart from the Senate-confirmed position. We decided that, but we took it up early last week. We only got a vote on it yesterday. We have issues concerning the President's national security authority. This bill would actually take away authority that the President has traditionally had with regard to the exercise of his power in instances concerning national security. That is a portion of the bill with which I disagree, and in one form or another I want to debate that issue on the floor of this body. We have the issue of management flexibility, whether we want to adopt the same old management tactics and techniques and laws that were passed back in the 1950s in the paper age where we have all of these multisteps that people go through in their careers. They go into the Government at a certain level and work their way up and stay with the Government 20 years and then they are out. That is a totally different era than we live in today. Do we want to adopt those practices to homeland security or do we want to do it a different way? This is an extremely important issue. How are they going to be able to get anyone to take that job, without the tools that are necessary to do that job, under a system that can take years in the resolving of disputes over worker competence and things of that nature? The chance over the last 5 years of a person being dismissed and actually removed from Government because of incompetency is three-tenths of 1 percent. Government workers themselves, the overwhelming number of which are good, competent people, would like some opportunity to make better pay and have some incentive pay and to move around easily and to get hired sooner. Surveys will tell us there is more than three-tenths of 1 percent who might want to find another line of work. Do we want to address that now? We all know it is a problem. Go down to the Brookings Institution and they will tell you--we all know it--that it is an outdated system. Do we want to address that? Do we want to address the issue of intelligence? At the heart of all the problems we have seen, before and since September 11, is the problem we have had with the collection, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence material. What could be more important to this country than that? We have a provision in this bill that has to do with that, and we need to discuss it. What is the best thing to do about that? These are important issues facing the country and this body at the heart of this bill. Are we going to put all of that off until a later time because we have only had a year since we have started the process in this body? I do not think we can do that. The problem is that we have not had the opportunity to consider those issues. After we considered the issue of whether the White House person is going to be confirmed by the Senate, I stated that I wanted to ask for the yeas and nays, get a vote on it and move to the next amendment. We have not been able to move, since that time, until today. Senators have exercised their rights under the rules of the Senate, and as we came to address this issue yesterday none of those issues--national security authority of the President, management flexibility, what kind of intelligence operation we are going to have, the reorganization authority of the President--have been brought up. I had not had the opportunity, and my colleagues have not had the opportunity, to address those issues at all, when everyone knows they are at the heart of this bill and they have to be addressed. What happened? Cloture was filed on the bill, which if passed would cut off a vote on all of those amendments. So on the one hand, we are saying we want due deliberation, we have not had enough time to consider all of these important issues, and then on the other hand we want to have cloture so consideration of those issues are cut off, at least for the foreseeable future. That is the dilemma we have now. I do not think my colleagues can have it both ways. I could not agree more that we need to take an appropriate amount of time, but simply waiting and watching the clock tick-tock, tick-tock does not make us any wiser. We need to consider the substance of these issues. That might make us a little bit wiser. We need to get on with it, in other words. That is why cloture is so inappropriate on something such as this. That is why we need to discuss and consider these amendments, instead of cutting off debate and washing our hands of it. We certainly should not be putting it off until another year. How long has it been now since we have known we have had intelligence deficiencies with regard to human intelligence, with regard to our ability to penetrate these foreign cells that wish us so much harm? How long has it been since we have known we have had problems in that area? A long time. A long time. This is not news to us. We do not have to study that problem any longer. We know we have it. How long has it been since we have known we have had problems at the border? A long time. How long has it been since we have known we have had problems at the IRS--INS? Well, IRS, too, especially, but the INS. We have known of those problems for a long time. They still exist. It is time we did something about it. I do not think the American people want us to wait until next year. We have spent considerable time in these 18 hearings, and dozens more in the Senate and House committees. Congress and the President have had the benefit of inclusions and recommendations of several commissions, such as the Gilmore Commission and the Hart Commission, that have studied this problem extensively. Frankly, it is going to be years before this Department is functioning, as it is, and certainly longer if we do not fix the flexibility problems I referred to earlier. If creating this new Department is really the right thing to do, the last thing we need to do is to put off its implementation. Some would have us wait and deliberate until we get it perfect, but I submit that day will never come. Reorganization of this size is clearly going to require further action by Congress in the future. The National Security Act of 1947 was not perfect. According to CRS, we have had to amend it 43 times since it was passed. Continuous oversight and legislative action is a part of the process of governing, which we should be prepared to do. I think it is instructive to look at the chronology over the last couple of years. I mentioned the Gilmore Commission, December 2000; Hart-Rudman, February 2001; September 11, of course, our country was attacked. From September through June, our committee held 18 hearings. Other committees did the same. In October of 2001, the President established the Office of Homeland Security and charged it with creating a national strategy. In October of that year, Senator Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill creating the Homeland Security Department. In May of 2002, Senator Lieberman introduced S. 2453, a bill creating a Homeland Security Department and a White House office. In May of 2002, there was a markup in Governmental Affairs. I did not support the marking up of that bill at that time. I probably said some of the same things the Senator from West Virginia said at that time. The thing that I was most concerned about at that time was that we did not have a national strategy. I thought a strategy as to how to approach a problem should proceed a bill that dealt with the problem. I still feel that way. In July of this year, the President released a national strategy. Also, in July of this year, the Governmental Affairs Committee received recommendation from several other Senate authorizing committees regarding the homeland security bill. This was a composite of the studied considerations and recommendations of other authorizing committees. It may be true that not many Members in terms of a percentage of the whole body know a great deal about the details of this bill, but there are Members and there are other committees who do and have been a part of this process. If there is truly a structural problem with the House bill or the substitute, we ought to consider it. We ought to take it up. We ought to talk about it. See what it is. See if we can do better. See if we need to set it aside. See if we need to amend it. We can do that. But so far, with the disagreements that we have on management flexibility and national security authority and things of that nature, most Members who have looked at it are in the same structural ballpark. And the parts we have a problem with, we are trying to deal with on the floor. So it comes down to the question of whether or not we want the Department right now. I believe it is the right thing to do and the responsible course is to act while we have the momentum. There are a couple of points that are properly characterized as ``lesser'' that I think are worth noting. This amendment also strikes language that allows the Department some flexibility in the procurement of temporary services of experts and consultants. This language was a compromise offered by Senator Lieberman in committee. It is important language that allows the Secretary access to the full panoply of experts he will undoubtedly need. Even under the limited structure envisioned by this amendment, he may need consultants to help determine the Department's needs for the legislative proposals or for the INS Directorate, which is not limited by the amendment we are now considering. In addition, the amendment strikes the visa issuance force of the substitute. This is a provision that was also in the President's proposal. It provides the Secretary of Homeland Security authority to issue visas which would be exercised through the Secretary of State. All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers came to the United States with legal visas; 3 of these obtained their visas through their travel agents through the State Department's visa express office. Many people who come to this country obtain their visas through the State Department. Striking this provision takes away the ability of the Secretary to coordinate the visa issuance with the rest of the Department, maintaining consistent rules and policies. With all due respect, I hope we will not adopt this amendment. I hope we can proceed with the important issues we have before the Senate that we have not had a chance to get before cloture was filed: The issues of whether the President's national security authority will be reduced; the issues of whether the new Secretary who is going to be taking on this broad responsibility will have the management tools with which to get the job done; the important issue of what kind of intelligence apparatus do we want within this Department; the issue of reorganization. All of these issues have been discussed in committee and have been discussed in some detail, many of them, by various commissions for some time. It is time for the Senate to discuss these issues. I continue to mention them in passing as we are considering other amendments, but we have not had the opportunity to discuss these things. If we want more time to discuss these important issues, these aspects of the bill, I suggest we take that time. We have it. We have it right now. These are all issues that need to be debated and discussed before this body. I don't know why we would want to wait any longer with regard to that which we know is so deficient. I suggest we get on about that and we be allowed to consider them in however much length or detail we want, with everyone exercising their full rights but talking about the substance of these issues that are before the Senate, that are staring us in the face, and are begging for our consideration.

Mr. THOMPSON. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. THOMPSON. It will get better.

Mr. THOMPSON. I yield the floor.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I urge the adoption of the pending Thompson amendment, No. 4513.

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

Mr. THOMPSON. I have no objection, Mr. President.

Mr. THOMPSON

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

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. When the President presented the national strategy. Thirdly, the new Director is still a pretty big player as far as budget authority is concerned.

Mr. THOMPSON. Those were three things we had concern about, and now it is down to two. I was going to make those points, move to table, and ask for the yeas and nays. That was my intention.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--I will not object--I wonder if we could agree that the time would not go against either side with regard to the debate of this amendment. I ask unanimous consent it not go against either side.

Mr. THOMPSON

Mr. THOMPSON. I yield 2 additional minutes to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Virginia be yielded 10 minutes.

Mr. THOMPSON. Would the Senator like additional time?

Mr. THOMPSON. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania.