The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“THE STATE DEPARTMENT AUTHORIZATION BILL” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S11890-S11891 on Aug. 8, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE STATE DEPARTMENT AUTHORIZATION BILL
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I rise today as Chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs to express my great disappointment that the Senate was unable last week to complete work on S. 908, the State Department Authorization bill. Perhaps ``unable'' is not quite accurate, Mr. President; ``prevented'' is closer to the truth. We were prevented from voting on the bill--in fact, prevented even from reaching more than a handful of the ninety or so amendments to it--by the obstinacy of the Democrat minority in the Senate.
I strongly believe that S. 908 is more than just a simple authorization bill; it is a litmus test for our willingness to change, our willingness to heed the mandate we received last November to save money, cut bureaucracy, and make government more responsive to both the taxpayer and the times. S. 908 was the first authorization measure this Congress to reach the floor within required budget targets. Moreover, the bill proposed to reduce dramatically bureaucratic overlap and duplication of effort among several agencies by bringing those agencies and much of their personnel under one roof in the State Department. This reorganization of our foreign policy apparatus, a reorganization supported by five former Secretaries of State, would save over $3.66 billion over four years.
But despite the savings, despite the streamlining, despite the benefits to the exercise of our foreign policy, the forces arrayed against the bill joined to form an unholy alliance with one objective: stop the legislation. I think this fact was most clearly illustrated by this statement from an A.I.D. internal memo brought to light while the bill was still in its formulative stage:
The strategy is ``delay, postpone, obfuscate, derail''--if we derail, we can kill the merger. . . . Official word is we don't care if there is a State authorization this year.
From the very beginning, despite repeated invitations from the Chairman, the administration refused to even meet to discuss the bill or participate in the drafting of it. There was no compromise, no constructive criticism, no alternatives--nothing. Instead, they stonewalled, obstructed, thwarted and delayed. Secretary Christopher, who had earlier championed a plan extremely similar to that envisioned by S. 908, was muzzled by the White House and suddenly opposed the idea. The only active interest they evinced was to engage in a distortion campaign. They claimed that folding the agencies into State would mean agency programs would be run by State employees with no experience in the fields, while failing to mention the fact that the bill also provided for the large-scale transfer of agency staff to ensure continuity. They labelled supporters of the cost-savings provisions in the bill ``isolationists,'' overlooking the fact that we've asked every other department and agency to tighten its belt. They contacted countless private groups that benefit directly (and monetarily) from AID programs and forecasted doom and gloom in an effort to generate lobbying against the bill. They said the President had an alternative plan far superior to the bill, but never produced one--the first time in my memory that the White House had failed to do so. It became clear that, like much of what this administration says, it is only paying lip service to his pledges to ``reinvent government.''
When it became clear that the bill was destined to leave the committee and go to the floor, the focus of the administration's efforts shifted to make sure that the Senators in the minority toed the administration line. Two attempts to invoke cloture--not to stop debate but to limit it to a manageable 30 hours--failed along strictly party lines. Only the distinguished ranking minority member, Senator Pell, indicated that getting a final vote, either up or down, was more important than obstructionism. Dozens of amendments materialized, many aimed at nothing less than delay.
Mr. President, I am amazed at how quickly the Democrats have forgotten their own words; how quick they are not to practice what they preach. For example, there was this statement in the last Congress from Senator Harkin, who voted against cloture on S. 908:
Well, it was obvious that after chewing up about 7 or 10 days of the August break that the Republicans simply were just going to talk it [the bill being debated] to death. They were going to offer amendments, talk on and on, and drag the whole process out and never reach any real, meaningful votes on [the] bill . . . the Republicans say no . . . [w]e will not take the keys that we hold to gridlock and unlock that padlock and open the door. . . .
Madam President, I have served in the Congress now for 20 years. I have seen a lot of fights in the House and in the Senate, some pretty tough ones; I have seen some pretty tough debates and pretty tough issues. . .. But in my 20 years in this Congress I have never seen anything like exists today. This attitude of gridlock, of stopping everything . . . that we have to stop things because perhaps the only way to take over is to tear it down. . . .
No, I have never seen anything like this in 20 years; the sort of the mean spiritedness, the antagonisms, the inability to give either side their proper due and to let legislation move. There is nothing wrong with people to want to amend and change, everyone should have their viewpoint and they should be heard. When it gets to the point where people just adamantly block everything, then surely this Senate and this Congress has become something that our forefathers never envisioned. . . . But this is not what our forefathers envisioned. They envisioned a legislative body that, yes, would debate and discuss and amend, but would do something and get something through. We now have a situation where the minority side will not permit that to happen. 140 Congressional Record S-13262.
There was this from Senator Lautenburg, who also voted against cloture on S. 908:
In my view, Mr. President, the answer is simple: the Republican leadership simply did not want the Congress, as an institution, to demonstrate that it can do the business of the people. . . . In the past, I have encountered steady opposition by Republican Senators who stalled for months any serious consideration of the bill and asked for extremist changes that would destroy its reforms. . . . And unfortunately, in the Senate where the rules and filibusters give the minority the ability to paralyze, we can see very clearly the handwriting on the wall if we ask for a vote on
[the bill]. 140 Congressional Record S-14221.
From Senator Boxer, another opponent of cloture on S. 908, we heard:
Madam President, I am very disappointed that a large majority of my Republican colleagues have decided that, outside of routine business, they really do not want to continue the work of this Congress. They want to stall and run the legislative clock down. They would rather talk on and on, even all through the night if that is necessary, to kill legislation that I believe is important to the American people. Madam President, the filibuster has a new best friend: The Republican Party. They embrace the filibuster. They love the filibuster. . . .
[W]e Democrats underst[and] that you [have] to get things done no matter which party [is] in control. We [do] not stop legislation. . . .
We did not come here to filibuster, we came here to work. We have a can-do spirit in this country . . . not a no-can-do yak-yak-yak through the night, stop the progress attitude. .
. . We are supposed to do the work for the people; the operative word is ``work.'' 140 Congressional Record S-13400.
Finally, Mr. President, we heard this from Senator Biden, another opponent of cloture on S. 908:
I also find it fascinating to listen and hear about what gridlock is. Let us talk about what gridlock is--my definition of gridlock. My definition of gridlock is when you have a clear majority of the elected representatives of the American people who work in the U.S. Congress--Democrat and Republican, House and Senate--when a clear, undisputed majority want to do something and a minority repeatedly comes along and says we are not going to even let you vote on whether or not we are going to do that--that seems to me to be gridlock, or obstruction. . . . Now, that is gridlock. I am not taking issue with anybody's views on the floor. I am not taking issue with their views, if they believe them as a matter of principle and that is the only reason. There are a lot of crazy ideas that are reflected in the American public and the American psyche and the U.S. Senate. I have been the father of some of those crazy ideas. So, I respect that. . .
. But the American people do not understand, nor should they have to understand, the technicalities--such as with the legal system and the complexities of the operation of the fifth amendment and the fourth amendment and the second amendment and the first amendment. They look at it and say,
``Wait a minute now, this is right and this is wrong. Why are we doing this?''
One of the things the American people, I think, also understand and view the same way is their Government. We all in this body know any Senator is within his rights to engage in a filibuster, to use the parliamentary rules to his or her advantage to keep a majority from prevailing--and there is an underlying, solid rationale for that having been put in the Senate rules. Notwithstanding that, I think the American people have had to wonder a little bit: Why is it that when repeatedly, time after time after time, an overwhelming majority of Members of both Houses of the U.S. Congress say they want to do something, our Republican friends stand up and say no. The party of no.
Maybe the Senator is correct, that the American people do not like the [bill]. I did not like it. So maybe I am with the American people. But I did not think the alternative was if I did not like that, we were not going to cooperate and not going to deal with the . . . problem in America. I thought that is what we were supposed to do. We disagree, we negotiate, we debate, we compromise and we act, when there is a majority that wishes to do that.
The truth, Madam President, is that the record is inescapable on what has happened to this Congress and this Senate because of filibusters, obstructionism, and gridlock. And I know that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have raised this issue in caucuses and are nervous about the potential of this strategy because that is what it is--a conscious . . . strategy to benefit their party at the expense of the people. It is a strategy to forsake America just to impact the elections so that one political party can win; not so that America can win. . . . 140 Congressional Record S-14627.
Apparently my Democrat colleagues have very short and selective memories. The Senator from Iowa took us to task for offering countless nongermane amendments in an effort to slow bills down. Perhaps he would like to enquire of the senior Senator from Massachusetts why he took to the floor last week to offer an amendment on the minimum wage to S. 908--hardly a foreign policy issue. The Senator from California castigated us for preferring to talk on and on, into the night if necessary, to kill important legislation. Perhaps she would ask her colleagues why after two days of floor consideration on S. 908 we were unable to produce anything more than several pages of Democrat rhetoric in the Congressional Record. The Senator from Delaware noted a conscious plan on our part to block all major legislation in order to benefit our party. Well. Mr. President, I wonder if that Senator would not agree that his party's stalling to death of S. 908, the Defense Authorization bill, Regulatory Reform--among others--demonstrates a similarly conscious plan? The Senator from Delaware noted that in the entire 103rd Congress, there were 72 cloture motions filed and 41 recorded cloture votes, which he characterized as ``a proud, record-
breaking amount of obstructionism.'' Well, in just the first 7 months of this Congress--7 month, Mr. President--we have had 32 cloture motions and 16 recorded cloture votes. I wonder what synonym for
``obstructionism'' the Senator from Delaware would choose to describe that tragic record.
Mr. President, Chairman Helms has promised to bring the bill back to the floor in the near future. I hope that our Democrat friends will take that opportunity to prove me wrong, call an end to their unconstructive blockade, and get down to doing the business the American people sent us here to do.
____________________
