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.
“WHITE HOUSE TRAVEL OFFICE LEGISLATION” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S4780-S4782 on May 7, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WHITE HOUSE TRAVEL OFFICE LEGISLATION
The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
CLOTURE MOTION
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, hereby move to bring to a close debate on H.R. 2937, an act for the reimbursement of attorney fees and costs incurred by former employees of the White House Travel Office with respect to the termination of their employment in that office on May 19, 1993:
Bob Dole, Orrin Hatch, Spencer Abraham, Chuck Grassley,
Larry Pressler, Ted Stevens, Rod Grams, Strom Thurmond,
Thad Cochran, Judd Gregg, Paul D. Coverdell, Connie
Mack, Conrad Burns, Larry E. Craig, Richard G. Lugar,
Frank H. Murkowski.
CALL OF THE ROLL
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the quorum call has been waived.
VOTE
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on H.R. 2937 shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are required. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, on this vote, I have a live pair with the Senator from Vermont. If he were here, he would vote ``nay.'' If I were permitted to vote, I would vote ``yea.'' I therefore withhold my vote.
Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Rhode Island [Mr. Chafee] is necessarily absent.
Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Lautenberg] and the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 52, nays 44, as follows:
YEAS--52
AbrahamAshcroftBennettBondBrownBurnsCampbellCoatsCochranCohenCoverdellCraigD'AmatoDeWineDoleDomeniciFairclothFristGortonGrammGramsGrassleyGreggHatchHatfieldHelmsHutchisonInhofeJeffordsKassebaumKempthorneKylLottLugarMackMcCainMcConnellMurkowskiNicklesPresslerRothSantorumShelbySimpsonSmithSnoweSpecterStevensThomasThompsonThurmondWarner
NAYS--44
AkakaBaucusBidenBingamanBoxerBradleyBreauxBryanBumpersByrdConradDaschleDoddDorganExonFeingoldFeinsteinFordGlennGrahamHarkinHeflinHollingsInouyeJohnstonKennedyKerreyKerryKohlLevinLiebermanMikulskiMoseley-BraunMoynihanMurrayNunnPryorReidRobbRockefellerSarbanesSimonWellstoneWyden
PRESENT AND GIVING A LIVE PAIR
Pell, for
NOT VOTING--3
ChafeeLautenbergLeahy
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 52, the nays are 44. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I and many others are very disappointed we cannot move forward on this legislation. I believe this legislation is very important to provide relief for Mr. Dale and six other members of the White House Travel Office. I think it is the right thing to do. To me, the bill is a decent gesture that Congress can make to seven individuals who have been forced to endure a tremendous injustice. These people were publicly, knowingly, and wrongly accused of severe improprieties. They had their careers put in jeopardy, their finances devastated and their reputations forever stained for what appears to be an effort for personal gain of insiders.
Three years ago when Billy Dale and the other members of the Travel Office were fired, the statement released by the White House on the firings was a source of immediate concern. It said:
Within the Travel Office, we found sort of gross mismanagement, if you will. There is basically very shoddy accounting practices, mismanagement and a number of other things. In order to correct those, we thought it advisable to take immediate action.
My concern over those firings was certainly not eased when it was disclosed that the Travel Office staff was fired based on an audit that was neither complete nor available to anyone for review. The Travel Office staff was fired and accused of mismanagement without being given the opportunity for a hearing or a chance to clear their names. Finally, travel business that was handled by salaried employees of the Federal Government previously and done on a noncommissioned basis was turned over to a Little Rock travel group.
At that time, I was ranking member on the Treasury, Postal Appropriations Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the funding for the White House. I sent a personal letter to the President requesting answers to the questions and the reasoning for selecting the Little Rock travel agency.
Unfortunately, like so many things from the administration, we did not get straight answers. There were half-truths and misleading statements. What the White House should have done is have the courage to tell the public the individuals were fired so that business could be given to friends of the First Family.
But instead, the White House made the decision to question publicly the integrity of seven career civil servants. Unfortunately for Mr. Dale and his colleagues, they also launched an investigation and a prosecution and hid behind the accusations.
As one commentator stated:
The administration tried to transform a prosaic personnel change into an act of moral heroism.
The President immediately absolved himself saying:
I had nothing to do with any decision except to save the taxpayers and the press money. The only thing I know is we made a decision to save taxpayers and the press money. That's all I know.
The First Lady also denied any involvement. Then an embarrassing memo was released from David Watkins in the White House laying the responsibility for the firing squarely at the feet of the First Lady. Despite this memo, denials continued from the White House. She maintains that she just ``expressed concern'' regarding mismanagement.
The White House remained unflinching in their refusal to admit that the firings had anything to do with anything other than financial mismanagement on behalf of the Travel Office staff. It was undoubtedly to continue that perception that the White House pushed the Department of Justice on to Mr. Dale. They had a very weak case, and they went forward nevertheless at a tremendous personal and financial cost to Mr. Dale.
Despite the White House spin and the efforts to lay the blame at the feet of Mr. Dale and his colleagues, the facts have come out. These are not pretty.
No. 1, a cousin of the President who had worked on travel during the campaign wanted to head the White House Travel Office.
No. 2, a Hollywood friend of the President had an interest in an airline charter company that wanted to profit from the White House business, and he was not happy the Travel Office was not giving him any opportunities.
No. 3, the relative of the President and the Hollywood friend concocted stories of corruption and people on the take. The President's cousin even took documents and files out of the Office to try to make a case against the Travel Office staff.
No. 4, according to the memo from David Watkins, the First Lady said we would have hell to pay if we cannot comply with the First Lady's wishes to fire the staff.
Finally, the White House made a public statement accusing the staff of gross misconduct. The White House, despite longstanding policy to the contrary, without checking with the Department of Justice, contacted and politicized the FBI to try to back up their efforts.
Unfortunately, after much personal harassment and great disruption and embarrassment to all of the members of the White House travel staff, the punishment did not end there. Mr. Dale was indicted for allegedly embezzling funds. But, as all of us now know the jury found him not guilty in less than 2 hours. As the distinguished chairman of our Judiciary Committee has noted yesterday, that is usually the amount of time it takes most juries to get organized. Talk about an open-and-
shut case. That one was clearly it.
Mr. Dale said after his acquittal he was relieved and prepared to go on with his life. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. Within weeks the Watkins memo surfaced--and it squarely contradicted the sworn testimony of the First Lady before GAO investigators--and the Clinton damage control team went into a full-court press. The White House spin doctors, Anne Lewis, the Clinton campaign, and high-priced Washington lawyers, including Mr. Bennett, and even the First Lady herself in interviews, continued to make allegations that had been thrown out in the criminal proceedings against Mr. Dale and the White House staff.
I think enough is enough. The dedicated public servants who worked in the Travel Office have suffered enough. I think that this bill is a small gesture which would not only offer some consolation to these people, but help them get out of the financial hole this whole matter has caused them. It was with great disappointment that we learned that the other side has chosen to filibuster this. My only guess is that this is an effort to save the President the embarrassment of having to sign this bill.
I urged last week that the majority leader bring this bill to the floor so we could hear arguments against it on the Senate floor. I am still waiting to hear any compelling argument. I appreciate the majority leader having called it up. I hope that one of these days very shortly we can get on with doing a very simple act of justice by providing compensation for some of the expenses and costs incurred. I yield the floor.
Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I believe, considering the results of the last vote, where it is very clear that there is a filibuster by the opposition to hold this bill up, it is important that the public have a chance to weigh in because this is such a political issue here trying to avoid this bill coming to the White House to save the President the embarrassment of signing it. When there are this much politics in the issue, and the public at the grassroots weigh in, they can make a considerable impact on the legislative process here in the Congress of the United States.
This may be one of those times when the public can make a difference, because this is clearly such a political move by the other side of the aisle. If politics wins out over right, then in the end wrong wins. It seems to me that the public will not want that to happen and they cannot allow that to stand.
This is such a clear-cut issue. First of all, there are seven employees involved that were fired. We have already taken legislative action for the others, but for Mr. Dale, no, because at the time we took action for the others, his trial was pending. Mr. Dale was subsequently then found not guilty by the jury.
So now we are taking action to do for Mr. Dale the same as we did for everybody else. There was not any debate in this body whatsoever over the action that we took on the others. It went through noncontroversial. The situation with Mr. Dale should be handled the same way. It should have gone through here in what we call wrapup at the end of the day and do it where we do all the noncontroversial measures.
But what we have seen today is politics at its best--politics at its best in the sense that the stonewalling is at its best, to see something that is right not to go on, not to go through, because there might be some embarrassment for the President. The Democrats want to protect the President from that embarrassment. Today what we have seen is kind of a drive-by sabotage of this effort to right the wrong that has been conducted against Mr. Dale, because he was unfairly, wrongfully fired.
Maybe there is no question he could have been fired, but the point is how the White House has tried to explain it and supposedly explain it away as a legitimate way of doing business. All the harm that has come to the family, not only of the employee who was fired, but the family because they have been wrongly treated, wrongly treated by a person who ought to know because he preaches the communitarian spirit that we ought to have one toward the other. That is what the President of the United States preaches.
We ought to have charity. This does not show the charity that the President preaches that we all ought to have one toward the other when somebody is wrongfully fired, when you bring the FBI and the Justice Department to bring a guy to trial. Then he has gotten off, and then we are trying to right that wrong by covering the legal expenses of Mr. Dale. It is wrong for the other side, acting at the behest of the White House, to avoid embarrassment for the White House for this all to go on and then at the other time preach a spirit of charity and communitarianism towards one another in this country.
The whole effort is being sabotaged. Worse yet, it is being sabotaged without even the other side engaging in much debate on the issue. They have really succeeded in legislative harassment of Mr. Dale, the same sort of harassment, just in another environment, that has been done against Mr. Dale by the White House, by the Justice Department, by the IRS. Thus continues, as I see it, the White House campaign to avoid embarrassment on this issue.
It is very clearly a clear-cut, right-versus-wrong issue. Politics has won out this day. The President continues to avoid responsibility for his actions. The victims continue to be wronged. That is why when it is so clear-cut, when our judicial system has cleared somebody, then I think it is a time for the American people to weigh in.
I ask the American people to make their voices heard on this issue, to hold the President's feet to the fire. Even if you are a Democrat out there in Main Street America, it seems to me that you want your President to do what is right. What is right is to sign this legislation, to call off the hordes on Capitol Hill that are preventing this measure from coming to a vote, and have the President demonstrate his charitable attitude that he preaches. Tell the President of the United States to show moral leadership, to do the right thing, to sign this bill.
Lastly, if politics wins in this instance, then it wins over right. When that happens, politics wins over right, then wrong wins. The public cannot allow this to stand.
I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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