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“THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT” mentioning the Department of Interior was published in the Senate section on pages S4761-S4776 on March 29, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE EMERGENCY SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 1158, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Disaster Assistance Act. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 1158) making emergency supplemental appropriations for additional disaster assistance and making rescissions for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1995, and for other purposes.
The Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATFIELD. 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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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. HATFIELD. Mr. President, the Senate now has under consideration legislation to provide the Federal Emergency Management Agency with an additional $1.9 billion in fiscal year 1995 and $4.8 billion for fiscal year 1996 for emergency disaster relief and to make savings in prior year appropriations through rescissions and other actions by a total of approximately $13.5 billion.
The supplemental appropriation is recommended in response to the President's request of February 6, 1995. The President requested a FEMA supplemental of $6.7 billion for disaster relief efforts in California and 40 other States. The House has recommended a reduced amount of $5.3 billion, all in fiscal year 1995 supplementals. Our Senate committee recommends $1.9 billion for fiscal year 1995, which is the amount most immediately required, and an advance appropriation for fiscal year 1996 of the balance of the $4.8 billion. The committee makes this recommendation as a first step in establishing a new procedure for the provision of disaster relief.
As noted in our committee report, Mr. President, funds appropriated for FEMA disaster relief have escalated sharply in recent years. Between 1990 and 1994, 195 disasters were declared by the President and nearly $15 billion was appropriated in emergency supplements for disaster relief. We should not abandon Federal disaster assistance for people and communities in need, but we cannot afford to continue this level of spending.
Senators Bond and Mikulski are making a good start in the right direction, and they are to be commended. They are the chair and the ranking minority member of the Subcommittee on HUD and Independent Agencies, under which FEMA comes for its funding.
Most of the attention given this measure has been directed at the rescissions we are recommending. I think there has been a considerable degree of overreaction to our proposals. We are not engaged in a barn-
burning exercise. In the main, the rescissions and other savings we recommend on the Senate side are reductions in the rate of increase, rather than a true cut.
Let me underscore that. We read in the media, see on the television, and we hear from many voices that the House or the Senate Appropriations Committee has cut these funds; we are putting the poor out in the street; we are doing all these things because we have cut funds, making it appear as though we have excised the account dealing with that particular human need.
We have also undertaken to take the unobligated balances which have languished for years after their initial appropriation. We call that the pipeline money and we have taken them as rescissions.
So let us get our nomenclature clarified that the cuts are reducing the rate of growth. We are not, in effect, dislocating people or ignoring the needs of people.
So what we bring to the Senate today, Mr. President, represents the committee's considered reevaluation of prior year funding levels, based on a renewed commitment to thoroughly scrutinize every spending proposal.
This is not to say that scrutiny did not exist before. It did. But we should always be willing to take a second look, and that is what the Senate is doing.
Some of those unobligated funds we found in the pipeline were unobligated transportation funds from 1982, 13 years ago. It was our feeling it was better to take those unobligated funds out of the pipeline for our rescissions and, at the same time, to recognize, as an example, low-income energy assistance for people of need in particularly cold weather.
It is not unusual for us to do this type of thing. Our committee has recommended rescissions and the Congress has enacted rescissions in every year for the past 20 years. Rescissions are not an innovation of the Executive. Since the rescission process entered and the Budget Act was created--now that is 1974--Congress has enacted into law a grand total of $92,940,296,915 in rescissions in that period of time, which is $20 billion more than we have been asked to rescind by Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
I want to focus on that again. In the parlance of today's communications, it is the Congress that is the big spenders; it is the Congress that has to be brought under control. And yet, at the same time, in this 20-year period, we have rescinded $20 billion more than these Presidents, five Presidents, have asked for.
Nor is the size of the package we bring to the floor today unprecedented. In 1981, when I was first honored to be chairman of the Appropriations Committee, we brought to the Senate a $15 billion rescission package. There may be others who find this a novel experience, but I do not.
[[Page S4762]] Mr. President, I think we also have to recognize that, as noted in our report, we have amendments to offer today to change the committee's recommendations. We expect those and we welcome them. We welcome them up to a degree, not an unlimited welcome. Some will want to restore funding. Some will want to cut more. We will engage in those debates and invite those amendments. But I hope there will not be an effort to unduly delay this legislation.
I believe we all share a desire to reduce Federal spending. We know very significant reductions are coming in fiscal year 1996 and the years beyond, and every dollar we are able to save today will make tomorrow's task easier. It is time we begin, and this is the beginning.
To honor the request I have made to move this bill along expeditiously, I am very happy to say that two Senators, who are on the floor, have indicated that they will agree to a time limit; some more and some less. But, nevertheless, we are starting out right by trying to get time agreements and not to have open-ended affairs that can drag this bill on and on ad infinitum. So I wish to thank the Senators who have indicated they would consider a time agreement. When we get ready for those amendments, we hope to have that agreement.
Mr. President, at this time, I yield to the ranking member of our Committee on Appropriations and former chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, of West Virginia, for any opening statement that he wishes to make.
Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Oregon [Mr. Hatfield] the chairman of the committee.
Mr. President, the Appropriations Committee reported this emergency supplemental and rescission bill, S. 617, on Friday, March 24. The motion to report the bill also included the committee's authorization for the chairman to offer S. 617 as a complete substitute for the House-passed companion measure, H.R. 1158. This was an unusual, but by no means unique, action by the committee. In order to facilitate comparison of the differences between the committee substitute and H.R. 1158, the committee report on S. 617, a copy of which is on each Senator's desk, contains comparisons between the committee's recommendations and the House-passed bill. The report to which I refer is Senate Report 104-17.
As has been the practice in the past, I, as the ranking minority member, joined Chairman Hatfield during the markup in urging members of the committee to withhold controversial amendments, in order to expedite the markup of this emergency supplemental and rescission bill. That request was largely accommodated, but there were a number of concerns expressed about the bill by various members of the committee on both sides of the aisle.
Among those concerns was the need to find a way to fund disaster assistance programs, such as the $6.7 billion appropriation for the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] contained in the committee substitute. In his supplemental request, the President designated this
$6.7 billion FEMA supplemental as an emergency appropriation under section 251(b)(2)(D)(i) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. Senators will recall that under the terms of the 1990 budget summit agreement, Presidents may designate discretionary appropriations as emergencies and, if Congress so designates in statute, such appropriations are, in effect, not charged against discretionary spending caps in any year.
In this instance, President Clinton exercised his authority to
designate the $6.7 billion FEMA request as an emergency requirement. The House chose to appropriate $5.4 billion for FEMA and to designate this amount as an emergency. However, the House-passed bill also contains rescissions and other reductions totaling $17.4 billion in budget authority. These rescissions are far in excess of what would be required to offset the cost of the FEMA supplemental.
The Senate Appropriations Committee's substitute, as set forth in S. 617, recommends an emergency appropriation of $1.9 billion for FEMA for fiscal year 1995, together with an additional $4.8 billion which would become available for fiscal year 1996. These funds would become available only after receipt of an official budget request for a specific amount of the $4.8 billion and only if such amount includes a designation as an emergency requirement.
What we have attempted to do, then, is to provide the amount needed by FEMA for fiscal year 1995, namely $1.9 billion, and to establish a disaster relief emergency contingency fund into which $4.8 billion would be deposited for use in amounts which Congress and the President agree to in fiscal year 1996 and beyond.
I am certain that the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the VA-HUD Subcommittee, Senators Bond and Mikulski, will talk further on this issue during the debate on the bill.
The committee substitute also contains rescissions and other spending reductions totaling $13.5 billion, or approximately $4 billion less in rescissions than the House bill. The major differences in rescissions between the two bills are as follows:
One, for the Labor-HHS Subcommittee, the House bill rescinds a total of $5.9 billion; the committee substitute recommends $3.05 billion, or
$2.85 billion less in rescissions.
For the VA-HUD Subcommittee, the House bill rescinds $9.3 billion; whereas the committee substitute proposes rescissions totaling $6.8 billion, or $2.5 billion less than the House bill.
For the Military Construction Subcommittee, the House bill contains no rescissions, but the committee substitute would rescind $231 million in military construction funding.
For Transportation, the House bill recommends rescissions totaling a little over $700 million and the committee substitute recommends rescissions totaling $1.9 billion, or $1.2 billion more in cuts than the House bill.
Mr. President, these are very difficult times for the portion of the Federal budget that is controllable by the Appropriations Committees; namely, discretionary spending. As noted on page 3 of the committee report accompanying S. 617, discretionary spending has decreased from 14.4 percent of GDP in fiscal year 1968 to less than 7.7 percent of GDP in fiscal year 1995. This fact should be ample evidence to those who bemoan Federal deficits and the resulting massive increase in the national debt that discretionary spending--other than the Reagan defense buildup--has not caused the deficit increases. The additional
$13.5 billion in discretionary spending cuts recommended in this bill are further evidence that, as painful as it is to cut Federal spending, the Appropriations Committee has always done its share, and more than its share.
Nevertheless, I am certain there will be a number of amendments offered to this measure which will propose restoration of funds for many worthwhile programs. I shall withhold judgment on such amendments until I can determine their merits on a case-by-case basis and to see whether offsets are provided and whether the offsets are reasonable that are provided.
Mr. President, in closing, I compliment the chairman, Senator Hatfield, for his leadership in bringing this measure to the Senate expeditiously, in order to allow the Senate to work its will on the issues that are raised in the bill, some of which, I fear, will be very troublesome to a number of my colleagues.
I also thank the members of the staffs, the dedicated members of our staffs, both in the majority and in the minority, for their usual fine cooperation and excellent advice and dedicated effectiveness as they have worked so hard to help the chairman and myself and the members of the committee to bring this bill to the floor.
I thank all subcommittee chairmen and all ranking members, Mr. President, for a job well done. I thank the chairman.
Mr. HATFIELD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I want to express my deep appreciation to the ranking member of the full committee. As is traditional in our committee, we have worked in a very bipartisan spirit. It has been with the
[[Page S4763]] support of the ranking member and members of that side, as well as our own Republican colleagues, that have made this product possible today.
Amendment No. 420
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Oregon [Mr. Hatfield] proposes an amendment numbered 420.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under
``Amendments Submitted.'')
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I submit this amendment on behalf of the Committee on Appropriations, pursuant to a rollcall taken in the committee. This is a substitute for the House bill that we received on this particular subject.
Unanimous-Consent Agreement
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on an amendment to be offered by Senator Mikulski, the ranking member, and Senator Bond, the chairman of the Subcommittee on VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies, that there be 2 hours equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATFIELD. I yield the floor.
Ms. MIKULSKI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Amendment No. 421 to Amendment No. 420
(Purpose: To propose a substitute for title I)
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I send an amendment in the nature of a substitute to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Maryland [Ms. Mikulski] proposes an amendment numbered 421 to amendment No. 420.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The text of the amendment is printed in today's Record under
``Amendments Submitted.'')
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to offer this substitute which I feel greatly improves the manner in which Congress deals with the disaster assistance. I call it the Truth in Disaster Budgeting Act.
Before I describe my amendment in the nature of a substitute, I would like to thank the chairman of the VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Subcommittee, Senator Bond, for all of the courtesies that have been afforded me, my staff, and other people on this side of the aisle.
I believe that Senator Bond, in the approach he used, tried to do the best with the deck that was dealt him. But I do not think it was a great deck. We essentially feel like we are a couple of cards short.
Mr. President, let me go through the principles of the bill, and I would like to amplify my remarks.
First, what this amendment does is replaces title I and it offsets the earthquake relief aspects by applying a 1.7-percent across-the-
board cut to all discretionary spending, except VA medical care, nutrition programs, Social Security, Medicare administrative costs, and defense readiness. It also, as the second part, requires Congress to set up a rainy day fund.
Let me explain where we are. The President has declared the need for a Federal emergency management supplemental to the tune of $6.7 billion to pay for the disasters that the United States of America has faced--
like in Northridge, CA, and the remaining aspects of Hurricane Andrew. That is the good news. The bad news is that Congress is being asked to pay for it out of one appropriations subcommittee, the subcommittee called VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies. These are 25 different agencies.
So essentially, one subcommittee within the U.S. Senate becomes the bank to fund disaster relief, and it is being done out of the rescission bill, when we do not have the money unless we take it from those programs that have already been appropriated.
I disagree with the President in taking and funding emergency disaster relief out of one subcommittee. That is the reason I am offering my substitute. I believe that natural disasters, which are acts of nature, should be funded and all the Government should bear the burden and not just a few programs.
Therefore, what my substitute does is replace the rescission contained in the bill with an across-the-board cut of 1.72 percent. This across-the-board cut will raise the $6.7 billion necessary to offset the cost of providing disaster assistance to complete the recovery efforts in Northridge, CA, and for previously declared disasters in 46 other States.
My substitute also specifically exempts those four areas which I feel should not bear any more cuts. First, VA medical care. Promises made, promises cut. Let us not cut VA medical care. Second, it exempts defense readiness because I believe we need to be able to stand sentry and have our force structure ready.
The other is that it exempts food and nutrition programs at the Department of Agriculture, like Meals on Wheels and school lunches. It also exempts the administrative costs related to Social Security and Medicare.
Mr. President, though the President has declared this FEMA supplemental to be a disaster, under the rules of the Senate we do not have to pay for it. It would be off budget. I believe people on both sides of the aisle agree that it should be paid for, and I agree that it should be paid for. I also agree with the principle that my colleague, Senator Bond, is doing, which is to essentially establish a rainy day fund--only I want to establish this rainy day fund for rainy days, both literally and figuratively, prospectively out of this subcommittee.
The reason I say that is the recent disasters like Hurricanes Hugo, Andrew, Iniki, floods in the Midwest, the Northridge earthquake, and the Loma Prieta earthquake, have proven a compelling need to reevaluate Federal disaster assistance policy. The first crucial step is to establish the rainy day fund so that we can respond and meet our responsibilities.
What the Mikulski substitute does is to direct the appropriate authorizing committees to establish both the mechanism and the source of funding for a rainy day fund before the start of fiscal year 1996.
I am offering this substitute because I have, as I said, two serious concerns with the bill reported to us: The bad precedent set by requiring that disaster assistance be offset by cuts in spending in other areas. Second, the dangerous precedent by taking all of these offsets or sources of funds from one subcommittee, VA, HUD, Appropriations Committee. VA, HUD is 25 different agencies. It funds all of veterans, all of housing, all of EPA, administrative expenses of FEMA, National Science Foundation, and even agencies like Arlington Cemetery.
I believe that we should not be the bankroll. I am also concerned that it would come out of primarily HUD and EPA, National Service, and VA medical care.
Mr. President, I am all for reducing the deficit, but what we must understand is that requiring offsets in discretionary spending to cover the cost of disaster assistance represents a fundamental change in Federal disaster policy. This was established with the enactment of discretionary budget caps and the pay-as-you-go and the balanced budget and emergency deficit control of 1985.
This longstanding policy is based on the principle that natural disasters are unprecedented acts of nature, and nature cannot be accommodated in the standard appropriations process. By definition, these acts are extraordinary and catastrophic and beyond the scope of what we could normally confront in the annual battle with both the weather, elements, and the battle of the budget.
Historically, since 1988, Congress has enacted seven major disaster supplementals, and they total $22.5 billion to aid virtually every State in the Union. The Appropriations Committee
[[Page S4764]] never had to come up with offsets, and the Senate continually rejected amendments which called for offsets. It was funded off budget. Our guiding principle was to provide relief to those who desperately need it.
Whether it was Hugo, the riots in Los Angeles, CA, flooding in Chicago, the terrible floods in Missouri, we never adopted offsets. Each of these was sudden, unforeseen, and funded outside of the budget caps.
I do not want to argue that. I believe, along with my colleague, and I believe the majority of my colleagues, that we should pay for it. But I believe we should pay for it across the board and not out of the bank of one subcommittee.
Mr. President, all of this is going to change if the offsets are the name of the game. I believe they should. But natural and national disasters should be a national responsibility. Therefore, that is why I establish this rainy day fund.
The bill before us establishes a second precedent which is that the source of FEMA will be the VA, HUD. I think it is outrageous that one subcommittee needs to pay for what happened in California, Florida, Missouri, Maryland, or any other State. What is about to happen is a disaster for the appropriations. What do I mean?
Well, first, out of that $6.7 billion, $4.6 billion will come from Housing and Urban Development, the one agency in our Federal Government that has primary responsibility for the needs of the elderly, children, disabled, and homeless. Also, $1.3 billion would be taken from EPA programs designed to assist States in complying with safe drinking water and wastewater treatment standards. It also will come from national service, veterans care, and the National Science Foundation.
I know that the Senator from Missouri, in taking the money from HUD, tried to protect the most vulnerable--the homeless and the elderly--and I thank him for that. But still, it will take HUD's annual budget, which is over $26 billion, and this represents a 20-percent cut.
The VA subcommittee cannot be either the bank or the will-call window for disaster relief. I believe it is bad policy. I also believe it is absolutely unfair. What happens the next time disaster strikes? Will we continue to take it from HUD? Will we eliminate the National Science Foundation? Will we just shut down a few hospitals out of VA? I do not know what will be done. What I do know, though, is that we anticipate more disasters. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the probability of earthquakes only escalating and that there is a 80 to 90 percent probability of another major earthquake in California within the next 20 years.
There is the strong probability of earthquakes in San Francisco and other areas. How are we going to pay for this? I believe we need a rainy day fund. I believe we need an earthquake fund. That is why I direct the authorizers to come up to deal with this.
This amendment is about fundamental fairness. Who pays? Who pays for national disasters? Who pays for natural disasters? That is why I believe it should be borne by the entire Nation.
So, Mr. President, what this amendment does is try to show that it is a new world order. We should not just fund things off budget and make out they do not exist, because we cannot keep racking up the deficit.
But, at the same time, I believe that one subcommittee should not be the bankroller. That is why I offer what I originally called my 2 percent solution. I was able to lower that, and it essentially now is a 1.72-percent across-the-board cut, exempting VA medical care, nutrition programs, defense readiness and those administrative costs, and Social Security and Medicare.
Mr. President, I could elaborate more on this. In the interest of moving in an expeditious way, I will yield the floor, yet reserve the time remaining for my side.
Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I yield such time as I may require. I ask unanimous consent that no second-degree amendments be in order on this amendment prior to the motion to table, which I will make at the end of the expiration of the time or yielding back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I want to thank my ranking member, Senator Mikulski, and commend her.
I have appreciated her courtesy and the continuing cooperation that we have had. I had the pleasure of serving on this committee when she was the chair. I have only recently found how large a job it was.
She mentioned something about the hand we have been dealt. Both of us, as chair and ranking member, now have a very difficult hand to play.
Senator Mikulski is extremely well informed and dedicated to the programs in this subcommittee. Her congressional role as an appropriator and an overseer she does with extreme skill and dedication and concern. I have the highest regard for her and her staff. We have worked together to try to obtain information on these programs, which has not been provided to members in a timely manner by the agencies, particularly by HUD.
Having said that, I could not disagree more strongly with the amendment that the Senator has offered. As I indicated, I will, at the appropriate time, move to table the amendment because, No. 1, this amendment does nothing toward deficit reduction.
The message I believe the people of America sent last November is that we have to get the deficit under control. That is No. 1. No. 2, and I think even more serious, is that this substitute for the measure reported out of the Appropriations Committee totally fails to address the vital need to stop the out-of-control commitments by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for future spending which this Congress and this budget cannot afford.
That is why I think that this measure should be tabled. I will urge my colleagues to do so.
Now, let me say something about the proposal of the VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Subcommittee in the FEMA disaster relief supplemental and rescission bill.
This chapter, our chapter, rescinds more than $6.8 billion and includes a supplemental for FEMA disaster relief of $1.9 billion for the current fiscal year and provides the balance of $6.7 billion requested as an advance appropriation for FEMA for fiscal year 1996. This will enable the Congress to monitor the utilization of the amount provided before further releases of the contingency appropriation for the next fiscal year.
With respect to the rescissions, the subcommittee's total of $6.8 billion is more than half of the rescissions contained in this bill. As my ranking member pointed out, this is a level that is almost double the subcommittee's proportionate share of total nondefense discretionary spending.
However, the committee's recommendation is less than the House-passed total of $9.3 billion; it also substantially exceeds the President's request of only $648 million in rescissions.
Mr. President, the committee's recommendation reflects the urgency of beginning the long and difficult task of curbing Federal spending. I am mindful that the Appropriations Committee has direct jurisdiction over only one-third of the Federal budget, which is discretionary spending.
I certainly agree with those who point out that a balanced budget cannot be achieved in any way solely through cuts in discretionary spending. Let me be clear about that.
There can also be no doubt that further reductions can and must be made in these activities if we are ever to erase our budget deficit, or hope to do so, and to stop passing on to our children and our grandchildren the burdens of the debt that we were too profligate to stop running up during our stewardship of the Federal Government and its resources.
The formulation, the putting together of this large package of rescissions, has been difficult. The committee was limited in its recommendation to funds which have not been obligated and which are not constrained by concerns over disruption of important ongoing activities.
Necessarily, we directed our focus toward rescissions which would not only curb expenditures in the short term, but which would yield the effect of redirecting programs and terminating
[[Page S4765]] activities to yield further savings in future years.
Finally, the committee's recommendations reflect our attempt to be as balanced and as fair as possible. No major agency within our jurisdiction was spared. Out of NASA, we took $150 million. Out of the National Science Foundation, we took $132 million. Out of the Department of Veterans Affairs, we took $100 million.
As noted, the largest reductions were taken in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $4.6 billion; and in the Environmental Protection Agency, from which $1.4 billion was taken--not because of a policy of determination against these activities, but simply because of the fact that these two agencies have the largest unobligated balances which can be rescinded and which will curb future year expenditure growth.
Now, a number of these reductions are painful. I have discussed these with officials in the administration who wonder why we are making these cuts.
I have had calls especially with respect to termination of new initiatives, such as the Community Development Financial Institutions Program and halting previously planned expansions, such as National Service or AmeriCorps. I also know that many of my colleagues would rather not deal with reductions in popular programs such as VA medical care, no matter how modest.
However, Mr. President, let me be clear: If we are going to cut, we have to cut something. There is nothing in this budget that was put in because people did not like it. Everything that was put in here was put in last year or in the years before because somebody argued successfully that it was a good idea. We cannot cut spending without cutting things that have some support.
Frankly, with the budget crisis that we face, one of the things we have had to do is put a hold on new commitments. Given the state of our budget deficit and the tremendous debt that we have driven up, a debt which will hit $5 trillion and require Congress to raise the debt ceiling before the summer is over, we have to start making some cuts no matter how difficult they are.
It is clear we must make reductions now or face even greater cuts and dislocations in the future under a very constrained allocation for discretionary spending.
Mr. President, two additional concerns have been raised over the general approach of this supplemental and rescission measure. The first relates to the prevailing sentiment that all supplementals, even emergencies which are or can be procedurally outside the caps, should be offset by reductions in other discretionary spending. I accept and support this greater standard of budgetary discipline because we need to do it. It is a necessary step toward balancing our budget.
But we should be mindful that this revision in our current budgetary practice demands a reappraisal of how subcommittee allocations are treated, since the bulk of emergency supplementals are provided for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which just happens to fall within the jurisdiction of the VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies Subcommittee.
The fact that we have to increase appropriations for FEMA, in my view should not mean that in the future we have to make cuts from very important programs in HUD, VA, NASA, and other agencies which are disproportional to the cuts taken by other domestic discretionary programs.
There is no way that our subcommittee can, in the future, be expected to pay for supplemental emergency requests for FEMA disaster relief. The number of Presidential-declared disasters and the amount of funding for such emergencies have been dramatically rising in recent years. A total of $14.8 billion has been appropriated in the last 5 years.
The pending supplemental bill carries the request of $6.7 billion, which is almost 10 percent of the entire discretionary allocation of the subcommittee. We cannot be expected to offset such massive requests without dramatic impacts on other ongoing activities within our jurisdiction in future budgets.
These are national disasters. My ranking member has pointed out the scope of these disasters. If they are paid for, resources should be identified on a Federalwide basis, not just by one subcommittee which happens to have FEMA within its jurisdiction. Matching such supplementals with rescissions within the subcommittee should not and cannot be a precedent for how such needs will be addressed in the future.
Let me move to the second point, which is more complicated but has an equally clear answer. That is the concern that we are rescinding too much from HUD. The answer is simply ``no,'' we are not. Some have questioned why HUD is being cut more than $4.6 billion, or two-thirds of the total rescission of $6.9 billion for the subcommittee. The answer is simple. The cut is roughly proportionate to the Department's available budgetary resources. Although HUD received new appropriations for fiscal year 1995, that is the current spending year we are in, of
$25.7 billion, HUD represents about 39 percent of the funding for our four major agencies--almost $2 out of every $5--it also carried into this fiscal year $35 billion in unobligated prior year balances. In fact, it carried more money in unobligated balances than we appropriated for this year. We could have the anomaly, even if we wiped out all new authority for HUD, that HUD could spend more than its current year appropriation because of the unobligated balances. In other words, HUD has more than double its current fiscal year appropriation available in budgetary resources when you include the massive amount of unspent, unobligated HUD funding.
Simple mathematics do not tell the whole story. We have to cut HUD. We have to stop spending new dollars. The chairman of the committee, the distinguished Senator from Oregon, made the point very clearly. When we say ``cut'' in this context, we are not talking about throwing people out of housing or imposing burdens on people now being served. We are talking about cutting new commitments, additional spending requests, commitments that could be extremely expensive over time and are not now undertaken.
We have to begin now, if there is any hope of surviving the very constrained freeze minus future for discretionary funds that we expect to see throughout the appropriations committee and even in our subcommittee.
The Congressional Budget Office recently analyzed the HUD reinvention blueprint and discovered that the cost of HUD-subsidized housing will increase by over 50 percent under the President's plan over the next 5 years.
Let me point out that currently, this year, we are spending $26.4 billion. That is how much we are spending this year. The Congressional Budget Office--which as we will all recall, the President in 1993 said is the independent scorekeeper, the objective scorekeeper to whom we must turn for the most honest, most accurate estimates of spending--
took a look at the information HUD provided at the time of the budget submission. There have been subsequent discussions and submissions, but based on what HUD, through OMB and the President, presented to us, HUD spending would increase to $28 billion next year, $30.7 billion the following, then $33.8, then $38.9 billion; by the year 2000, HUD-
assisted housing would be $39.9 billion--50 percent more than we are spending this year. And, also, incidentally, the total of all these five red bars would come to about $39 billion. So we would be adding
$39 billion to the national debt over 5 years, according to CBO's estimate.
Unless we act now to curb the spiraling growth in outlays, we are going to have to make some very draconian cuts in the near future and be in a position where we cannot honor commitments made to those in public and assisted housing.
As I have indicated, I have had meetings with the Secretary of HUD and the Director of OMB. We have gone over many of these questions. They have promised us additional details, which we have not yet had an opportunity to see and analyze. They have said they will meet with the Congressional Budget Office to explain and perhaps even suggest revisions. But let me point out, even under the President's own budget submission, the President asked for HUD to be increased by $20 billion in budget authority over the next 5 years
[[Page S4766]] and by $14 billion in outlays. The President is asking us, at a time when we know that discretionary spending must be kept under control, to increase outlays, to increase actual spending, by his own numbers, by $14 billion.
I suggest there is no way we can do that. I suggest we are faced with a difficult--but a simple--solution, and that is turn off the pipeline of new subsidized units. That is the fundamental focus of the committee's recommendations for this rescission bill. We are also recommending a portion of the funds rescinded by the House be restored, and that we redirect resources to another urgent priority; namely, the restoring of budgetary sanity to this out-of-control department. We say go ahead with the programs to demolish the failed housing developments and put the rest on a sound footing to survive the competition and the subsidy reductions coming down the pike.
Some of my colleagues have said we do not need to deal with severely distressed public housing. This is one area where I believe I agree very strongly with the Secretary of HUD. There is no greater problem in many of our communities than the uninhabitable, often vacant, thoroughly unlivable, large public housing units in many of our metropolitan areas today. Too many of them have become havens for crime, for drugs, and violence. They are not only not a safe place to raise a family, they are a great danger to the neighbors who live in the vicinity and they are tremendous blots on the landscape of our major metropolitan areas.
To me, this is an investment in the future which must be made now if we are to stop some of the spread of blight that has been generated by poorly maintained and poorly conceived projects of the past.
Amid all the debate over the future of HUD, it is important to keep in mind that over 4.8 million families receive Federal housing assistance, and over half of them are elderly or disabled. It is also important to note that such housing assistance is expensive.
As I said, $26 billion in current year fiscal year 1995 outlays and current costs are rising. In fact, with the long-term contractual commitments previously made by HUD the Government is currently obligated to pay over $187 billion over the life of these contracts, some stretching out 40 years.
Many of my colleagues have approached me to express grave concern over some of the battles of the press releases in the State demonstrations characterizing those of us who wish to cut HUD's new commitments as being ready to throw people who are getting assisted housing out on the street, having no concern for the people who are assisted by HUD. I am told that C-SPAN carried a program this weekend that featured HUD officials but it also featured special interest groups and local officials who want to spend as if there was no tomorrow, who think that we cannot spend enough money on HUD and its programs to satisfy them.
Frankly, let us be clear that we are sensitive to and very concerned about the obligations and the undertakings of HUD. That is why we want to make sure that they do the job properly. It is I think not helpful for those who would be advocates for the programs of HUD to make the kinds of irresponsible charges that some local officials have made. That does not advance the level of discussion. That does not assist in helping us formulate responsible programs given the long-term nature of the obligations and commitments. Halting the budgetary growth of the Department can only be accomplished with a focused, determined, multiyear effort. Unless we begin now with this bill we will lock ourselves into another multibillion-dollar chunk of long-term budget obligations.
This is only a first step, one of many in which we will go beyond the limited fixes in cuts that can be accomplished in a rescission bill. We have to enact through the authorizing committee major reform legislation later this year.
I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Appropriations Committee, my colleagues on the authorizing committee and other interested Members in this body in formulating a responsible program. But we are not going to be able to adopt a responsible program if we allow the budget to continue to spin out of control to run up obligations and commitments now that will cost us billions of dollars we do not have in the future. Only if we put a tourniquet on the bleeding and stop the new commitments can we make sure that our restorative work, our surgery and our treatment of the patient, a very sick patient of HUD, can be successful.
I will ask my colleagues to join me in a motion to table. But for the moment, I yield the floor. I reserve the remainder of my time.
Ms. MIKULSKI addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 47 minutes and 45 seconds.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I know that there are others who wish to speak. While we are waiting for them to come, I want to comment on the comments of my colleague, the Senator from Missouri.
First, the Senator said that the Mikulski substitute does nothing for deficit reduction. I respectfully disagree with that because you see under the rules of the 1985 Budget Act, disasters, if declared by the President as an emergency, do not have to be paid for. President Clinton declared these disasters in the FEMA supplemental an emergency. So, therefore, under the rules of the Budget Act, they could be placed on the discretionary spending. Yes. Added to the deficit but it will not count against the appropriation.
My bill maintains the President's declaration of an emergency and a disaster. But in the interest of deficit reduction we are willing to pay for it. Therefore, this $6.7 billion does not go off into some limbo and yet add to the deficit. It will be both through my substitute a pay-as-you-go. It will be a one-time only pay-as-you-go through this across the board with the prospective establishment of a rainy day fund.
So you see. I believe that the Mikulski substitute which is a pay-as-
you-go substitute does reduce the deficit by $6.7 billion. There is a great deal of debate about what this rescission money will be used for. Is it going to be used for deficit reduction or is it going to be used for tax cuts to be offered by the other party? There are those of us who support deficit reduction and, therefore, know that if that is the point of the rescission package we will look for elements to do the deficit reduction, but here is a whole other substantial school of thought within this institution led by the Senator from West Virginia, Senator Robert Byrd, who says ``yes'' to deficit reduction but ``no'' for the savings to be done on tax cuts. I will not debate the points that Senator Byrd wishes to bring to the body's attention later this afternoon. He will do it in his own usual eloquent, persuasive way. But I believe the Mikulski substitute does, because we are doing pay-as-
you-go not by putting it off budget but with $6.7 billion for deficit reduction.
Do I go as far as the House? No. Do I go as far as the Hatfield-Bond legislation? The answer is no. The House went to $17 billion. The efforts by the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Hatfield, and the subcommittee, Senator Bond, goes to $13 billion. But when I knew I was going to try to deal with this problem by an across-
the-board cut, I did not want to gouge other subcommittees by paying--
for the fact that we do not have a mechanism for a rainy day fund. So I kept it under what I called the Mikulski 12.2-percent solution. Sure. I could have come up with more rescissions to do an across-the-board. But I did not want to gouge the criminal justice system. I did not want to gouge Labor, HHS. I did not want to gouge the important funding that needs to go on in defense.
So that is why my amendment is so modest. It is 1.7 percent. It is absolutely modest. I say to my colleagues, I do not like across-the-
board cuts either. Hopefully we can do this with line-item evaluations. It is natural disaster funding that should be borne by the Nation doing this across-the-board cut.
I can comment on other aspects of it. But I note that the distinguished chairman, ranking minority of the authorizing committee, Senator Sarbanes, is on the floor. He is interrupting his other important work to be here.
[[Page S4767]] So I will yield the floor and yield to Senator Sarbanes such time as he might consume to elaborate on this subject.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, what is the time situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 41 minutes and 67 seconds.
Mr. SARBANES. If the Senator will yield me 5 minutes.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield the Senator such time as he may consume.
Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, I rise in very strong support of the amendment that has been offered by my distinguished colleague from Maryland, the substitute amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill.
First of all, traditionally we have considered disaster relief measures as an emergency supplemental and handled that way, if I am correct. I believe that is correct.
Ms. MIKULSKI. The Senator is correct.
Mr. SARBANES. The last six or seven disaster supplementals over the last few years have all been handled in that fashion, I believe.
Ms. MIKULSKI. That is correct. They total $22 billion. They have been funded off budget as prescribed by law as the President declares it an emergency disaster.
Mr. SARBANES. As I understand it, the President declared this supplemental request an emergency disaster.
Ms. MIKULSKI. The President has declared it an emergency disaster and therefore follows the same procedure under the law.
Mr. SARBANES. What is happening is that there is a move afoot to, in effect, cover the amounts needed for the disaster relief.
Now, I have obviously some questions about this decision on the basis of past practice, but let me pass beyond that issue and simply address the manner in which disaster spending is being covered in the proposed supplemental appropriations bill before us. A very heavy proportion of the disaster spending amount in the supplemental is being taken out of the allocation to the VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee in which the FEMA funding is located.
Now, it is my understanding that more is coming out of that subcommittee than the cost of the disaster relief that is before us. So, in effect, this particular subcommittee, which by chance has jurisdiction over FEMA, is absorbing the entire additional amount given to FEMA for disaster relief out of the allocations for the other agencies under its jurisdiction.
This just does not make sense. It leads to great inequities that a disproportionate burden is borne by the other agencies within the jurisdiction of that subcommittee.
I am particularly concerned because I have a responsibility with respect to the authorization of housing programs. The housing department finds itself within that grouping of agencies that are covered by the arbitrary differentiations that are made within the Appropriations Committee.
If there is anything that calls for the kind of approach that the distinguished Senator from Maryland has taken, it is handling disaster relief. Obviously, if you are going to cut other programs to pay for disaster assistance, the burden of these cuts ought to be borne across the board. There is no rationale, no logical or rational reason, why paying for the disaster relief ought to come out of those few agencies that happen to be grouped with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for purposes of handling an appropriations bill.
Providing for disaster relief must be done; I support this supplemental for disaster relief. In fact, I would support doing it as an emergency the way the President submitted it to the Congress. If, in effect, the cost of the disaster is going to be covered by diminishing other accounts--and we are talking about the very fiscal year in which we find ourselves--I do not think that the disaster spending ought to be covered out of those agencies that are grouped within this particular Appropriations subcommittee. That is illogical, not logical, and that is inequitable, not equitable.
The amendment that has been put before us would recognize that national disasters are a national responsibility. It would avoid setting a precedent, that you are going to pay for disasters out of the accounts of this particular subcommittee. With the bill before us, you are going to establish a precedent that makes this particular subcommittee the window to which you go for all future disaster relief. What is the logic in that? We could just as easily put FEMA over into the Defense Subcommittee. We could combine FEMA with emergency preparedness which covers not only disaster relief, but other emergencies. At one point, FEMA's prime responsibility was to address questions of how we would react to a nuclear attack. So maybe FEMA should be put in the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and then, if you followed the principle that is being used here, when we have a national disaster, we would pay for it entirely out of the defense budget.
I am not arguing that should be done. I am only making that point to illustrate the lack of logic of what has been done in the supplemental appropriations bill that is before us. This is not the way to handle the funding of disasters. I very much hope the amendment of the Senator from Maryland--which I think provides a much more equitable way of paying for disasters--passes. This amendment is an across-the-board cut with respect to all agencies and departments. It is a much more sensible way to go about this at this time. An across-the-board cut may not be the best way to pay for disasters in the future. I know the Senator from Maryland has pushed the notion of providing an anticipatory mechanism to meet future disasters. Under that approach you would set up a fund and appropriate to it in anticipation of future disasters since it is fairly reasonable to hypothesize that there will be natural disasters at some time. Natural disasters do occur on a periodic basis, and we need to address them. An advanced funding mechanism would be a better way of doing it.
However, that is not now before us. Confronted with the problem that we have, I think this amendment makes a great deal of sense and is certainly a far preferable approach than the one contained in the legislation that is now pending.
Therefore, I very strongly support Senator Mikulski's substitute amendment and urge my colleagues to support it.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator for yielding me time.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the Senator for speaking in behalf of this amendment. He makes excellent points, particularly the consequences to the housing programs and the compelling needs we have to meet. I thank him for interrupting his schedule.
How much time would the Senator from California like to have?
Mrs. BOXER. Seven minutes.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield to the distinguished Senator from California, who has faced her share of earthquakes and slides and really knows what these issues are, 10 minutes.
Mrs. BOXER. I thank the Senator from Maryland. I thank her for her leadership in giving this Senate a really fine alternative to the bill that is before us. I certainly want to associate myself with Senator Sarbanes' remarks, and I will try not to repeat them but to be very specific on why I feel the Mikulski substitute is so preferable to the committee-reported bill.
First of all, why are we here? We are here on this bill because we have had disasters in this Nation, certainly in California more than our fair share, that required payments to the local governments, the local people. We have buildings that need to be repaired from earthquakes. We have buildings that need to be repaired from floods. This is happening not only in California but across this great Nation. We have predictions, as the Senator from Maryland said, for other disasters, and I wish to make a point to my colleague, Senator Mikulski, of which perhaps she is not aware.
If I might make a point to the Senator on this issue of the future projections of disasters, what is very interesting is that the USGS has looked at the earthquake situation and not only do they predict a terrible earthquake in California sometime in the future, but they also talk about a devastating earthquake in Seattle and one in the midsection of the country from the Tennessee fault.
[[Page S4768]] So I stand here as a Californian, but I also say to my friend that other areas in this Nation are very apt to be visited by these crises. I wonder if she was aware of that study.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I am aware of the study. We spoke about the work being done by the Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior that is trying to develop sophisticated methods for earthquake prediction. They are predicting future--within the next decade or so--
severe earthquakes on the west coast but possibly in the Midwest itself. I might add, you never know when an earthquake is going to hit. As the Senator knows, the State of Maryland is not an earthquake State. We are more a hurricane State.
Yet we had earthquakes in a small county in the Baltimore metropolitan area. It was shocking. Fortunately, we had no major loss of property and no loss of life.
So, yes, we have to be ready to stand centrally on the whole issue of earthquakes, but we do need that rainy day fund.
I thank the Senator for reiterating the report.
Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I think it is so key here, because when someone who is an expert says that this country is going to be visited by floods and earthquakes and other disasters, we cannot just throw up our hands.
Why are we doing this particular bill at this particular time? Clearly, the President asked for $6.7 billion. The U.S. Senate has decided to go beyond that and cut out $13 billion--$6.7 for FEMA, the added extra billions just because they wanted to cut more.
I point out, as Senator Mikulski has, that since 1988, Congress has enacted seven major disaster bills and none has been offset. This has been done over earthquakes and floods and storms across this Nation, with Republican Presidents as well as Democratic. I suggest to my colleagues, this is not a partisan issue.
We need to be ready for these disasters. So I support that part of the bill to be ready for the disasters. But, on the other hand, I have to say to my friends, we should make this a clean bill. We should give the President the money that he needs to meet these disasters and then have another bill that looks at rescissions and not hold these communities hostage.
Let me explain what I mean.
What we are doing, for the first time in history, is going beyond what even the President has asked and cutting all these other programs. I know a lot of my colleagues are thrilled to do it. They are thrilled to do it. But I want to point out what it does to California.
It hurts my people. And I hear, ``Well, wait a minute, Senator. You are the ones who have all these disasters.'' That is true, and we need that FEMA money.
But you should see what these cuts do to the people of California, to the children, to the children of California-- taking computers that were going into classrooms. They are not going to be able to put them there. Rescinding the summer jobs program for our kids, which is so important.
I visited some of these young people who had the benefit of these jobs. What a way to slash and burn, using as an excuse, you know, the FEMA requests.
The House bill was even worse. I compliment my friends. They made this a little bit better. But it still hurts. It hurts business. It hurts jobs.
Let me tell you, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund program account, this gives credit to businesses to expand, to create jobs. Cut severely. EDA creates jobs. We are looking at a cut in California here and across the Nation. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, these are funds that help our manufacturers. It is very successful. It is cut. It is going to be hurt. And that is going to hurt my State's economy.
Slashing funds from the Base Alignment and Closure Commission, needed desperately to clean up these bases, to move them into productivity. Cut, slashed, and burned.
EPA, safe drinking water. Some people do not like it. They say it goes too far. Well, let me tell you what is going to happen here. We are going to have big problems in my State. In L.A., in Lake County, in San Diego, water cleanup. We need to clean up the water. People need to be able to drink the water. This bill slashes that program.
Agriculture: $1.5 million cut from the new USDA salinity research lab. And all farmers know that controlling that salt water incursion is very important to them. That is going to hurt our farmers.
Interior: We know that some of our threatened species will not be listed. Again, some people here hate this Endangered Species Act. They want to see it destroyed. Well, do not back-door it by doing these kinds of cuts. Let us have the debate. Let us find out where the American people are on saving the bald eagle. I will take you on in that fight any day. But, no, it sneaks in this bill back-door.
There is a $35 million cut from solar and renewable energy research. That makes a lot of sense. The biggest cause of our trade deficit is imported oil. Why do we want to hurt these alternative energy programs? Again, if you want to debate it, let us bring it on to the floor. But this is done in a back-door approach.
I told you about education--$6 million in Federal funds lost to my State to be used for innovative programs emphasizing math and reading.
How about a cut in title I funds for educating our most disadvantaged kids? Mr. President, 8,500 California students are going to suffer from this cut.
How about this one: Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program for drug prevention. I cannot believe that Senators want to cut that program. Everyone stands up here and says, ``Drugs, they are a curse on our society.'' It is in here, a $100 million cut from that program. My State loses $10 million. Ninety-seven percent of all school districts in California benefit from this program, keeping drugs away from kids by teaching them. I do not get it. I do not get where that makes sense for this great Nation.
Sixty-nine million dollars for teacher training under the Eisenhower Professional Development Program--Eisenhower, a great Republican President who understood the need for math and science. As a matter of fact, it was Eisenhower who wrote the Defense Education Act. And do you know what he said, a military man? ``You can have all the bombers you want. If you do not have smart kids who can read and can write and can do math, this country will never be the greatest country on Earth.'' Well, they are slashing and burning from that program too.
I told you about computers in the classroom. I know many of us go around to schools. These computers open up the eyes of these children. Oh, we are cutting that program, too, $5 million for education technology programs. We are going to lose $500,000 in our State. That goes a long way.
You know, if there is any consensus around this place, I would have hoped it would have been around the children.
There is a $42 million cut from Head Start.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time yielded to the Senator has expired.
Mrs. BOXER. I ask the Senator for an additional minute to wrap up.
Ms. MIKULSKI. I yield the Senator an additional minute.
Mrs. BOXER. We have cuts in Head Start. We have cuts in child care. We have cuts in national service--national service. Again, I urge my colleagues, go speak to those volunteers from AmeriCorps. And my friend Senator Mikulski was so instrumental in that. I cannot believe we are cutting that program, because it was working out there. I have so many personal stories I could tell about AmeriCorps.
I met a young man who was shot in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles. An Americorps volunteer visited him in the hospital every single day, got him on the right path, got him back to school. And we are going to cut AmeriCorps.
So let me just say, in closing, I thank my friend, Senator Mikulski, for giving us a chance to substitute spending cuts that are fairly done across the board, that do not hurt the children, that do not hurt the businesses, that do not hurt jobs, that do not hurt the environment. I cannot tell the Senator how pleased I am to support her in this amendment.
Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes.
[[Page S4769]] Let me just follow up on some of the points so eloquently made by my good friend from California. She was kind enough to invoke the memory of President Eisenhower. You have to have a pretty good memory, because after World War II, I believe that was probably about the last time we balanced a budget around here and stopped running a deficit that adds to the debts of our children.
She has made a very strong argument for every spending dollar that we have. She said it is all being spent just properly and we can take an even cut across the board. Frankly, I hope that we have come beyond that point where we can say that the only way to cut is to cut across the board. We have seen examples in recent years of how various agencies can look at programs and make cuts to programs that are not working or that have been overappropriated.
The current administration calls it Reinventing Government. The current administration has asked that we cut $5 billion from NASA, not across the board, not across from everything. They are asking the Administrator, and I believe we are going to support him, to take a look at where cuts can be made, not across the board, not off of everything, but combined activities, combined areas where cuts can best be made because we cannot keep spending like money is going out of style or our dollar will go out of style.
Our friend from California mentioned taking computers away from children. Computers are very important for children, but I have been in schools where I have seen rows and rows of computers sitting on empty desks with no children in front of them.
I cannot address all of the cuts made in other parts of the bill, and I will rely on my colleagues who serve on those subcommittees to talk about those, but let me talk about the cuts in EPA. We have cut money that was funded for a program that was not authorized last year. We have left in the safe drinking water funds for EPA the amount of money that the administration has requested for next year on the hope that we will reauthorize the Safe Drinking Water Act and be able to spend that money. We are not cutting jobs, we are cutting money that cannot be spent.
My colleagues talked about the hurt, what a tremendous hurt is being imposed by cutting off some of the Federal spending. Let me tell you about the hurt that is going to be inflicted on our country and on future generations if we continue to build this deficit. We have a commitment to spend far more than we are taking in and, unfortunately, we have no leadership from the President in cutting that spending. He raised taxes and promised to cut spending, and his budget projections show our spending increasing $366 billion over the next 5 years. He would add $1 trillion to the national debt.
What about the hurt of that $1 trillion added on to almost $5 trillion that we have now? That is a tremendous burden for future generations to carry, and we have seen what happened to our neighbor to the south when they spent more money than they had. The international market said the peso is weak. They did not get their economic house in order, and there is a crisis in Mexico.
What has happened in Mexico to the peso could happen in the United States to the dollar. The dollar has fallen against the value of the yen, lost almost a third of its value because the international markets think we are not getting serious about cutting spending.
We are cutting spending here to get our house in order, and we are also trying to fund supplemental emergency appropriations for disasters. Disaster spending over recent years has been about $19 billion. I am pleased that we heard about how important it is to California, because you know how much of that went to California? Mr. President, $11 billion. Sixty percent of the money that we have spent on disasters has gone to California--$11 billion.
We are stepping up to the table to meet the needs of our friends and neighbors in California, as this body stepped up to help the people in the State of Missouri and the Midwest when we were struck by floods. But when we make those cuts, Mr. President, I suggest that the only responsible way to make cuts is to eliminate low-priority items, to eliminate money that is not being spent or that does not need to be spent or, as we are doing in this bill, to cut spending that we cannot afford for the future.
That is why I believe that all these wonderful arguments do not hold any water when you look at the cuts that are made in the portion of the bill before us today; that is HUD, VA, and independent agencies.
Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, how much time do I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 21 minutes 24 seconds.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Thank you, Mr. President. I know we are awaiting to hear from the leadership their advice on the hot line as to when they wish to establish the vote. I believe the vote will occur sometime within the next half an hour.
While we are waiting for that, I know one other Senator wishes to speak.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Mikulski amendment.
I am concerned that the programs of the VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee are taking an inordinate cut in the rescission package before us. If we are to pay for disasters, and not declare these as emergencies, then the spending for these should come from a broader base of programs. The Mikulski amendment's 1.72-percent cut is an appropriate way to spread the cost of natural disasters.
The amendment would exempt important accounts from the cut. This across-the-board cut would not hit administrative costs for Social Security and Medicare. It would not cut defense readiness. It would not cut veterans medical care. It would not hurt the food and nutrition programs.
I am particularly concerned about the rescission package because the brunt of the cuts will fall on the programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This bill before us would cut $4.6 billion from HUD's programs. This cut represents 18 percent of HUD's 1995 appropriation and 35 percent of this entire rescission package.
This cut would injure important HUD programs like public housing modernization, an important pension fund demonstration, and section 8 vouchers that help us meet the housing needs of the poorest of the poor. All of these programs are serving to help us with reforming HUD. Modernization is critical for fixing up public housing, the pension fund demonstration is helping us dispose of the HUD-owned inventory, and the vouchers are important tools in helping us solve the problems of mixing the elderly and the young mentally disabled in public housing as well as helping us relocate people when we tear down the older, dilapidated stock.
I also urge the Members to look at the situation that these specific cuts will set up for next year. Many are sighing a sigh of relief that the cuts in the Senate bill were not as draconian as the House cuts, but by taking these resources away today, the programs in the VA-HUD subcommittee will be under even greater pressure next year--these include not only HUD and EPA, but also NASA and veterans.
I urge my colleagues to support the Mikulski amendment.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, as we debate this substitute, I want to, again, say that there are two issues that the Senator from Missouri and I absolutely agree on. First, that we need to reform HUD, and the other, that FEMA must have a rainy day fund.
If I can just comment on the need to reform HUD, the Senator from Missouri is absolutely right about the need to organizationally reform HUD and then to deal with the conflicting and confusing budget information we receive that is demonstrated on the Senator's charts presented by CBO.
First, what my colleagues might be interested to know is that I was one of the ones to talk about reforming HUD before the Cisneros plan came in. When I chaired the subcommittee, I actually commissioned a report by the National Association of Public Administrators to identify what are the areas to do that. I am happy that the Senator from Missouri and his very competent staff have also picked up on that.
In essence, what they said was that HUD was an organizational disaster. They have over 240 different programs, sometimes serving such a narrow need
[[Page S4770]] that it becomes dysfunctional from a managerial standpoint. HUD has been crippled not by us trying only to meet compelling human needs, but HUD has been crippled by the passion of both Members of the House and the Senate on both sides of the aisle to pursue trophies: ``Let's come up with a program for this. The new trophy is new programs.'' A line item for this, a line item program for that.
So I look forward to working with the authorizing committees, as well as my colleague on the Appropriations Committee, to move HUD from these 240 different programs often with their own bureaucracy to six programs and that needs to be done in an orderly, methodical, prudent way.
Then there is the second issue about the question about the so-called CBO scoring and about OMB.
Mr. President, in the interest of time, I will not go through these detailed commentaries that I have received from the Office of Management and Budget. But there is a great deal of difference between what the assumptions are by the Congressional Budget Office and by the Office of Management and Budget.
They use technocratic words and I believe I like to use diner vocabulary. Essentially, from the diner's standpoint, we need to get OMB and CBO to resolve their assumptions. The Senator is right, there is absolute confusion over what we need to pay for, what we need to pay for in the future and whether there is a train wreck.
So I do not dispute the nature of his argument, nor am I here to defend OMB against CBO. Believe me, I am going to let those people with green eyeshades and bifocals far better calibrated than mine to get into a room and actually advise the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee and myself as to what are the real assumptions, so that we can come up with a real appropriation.
However, at the request of Dr. Rivlin, I will put into the Record her concerns about the differences between CBO and OMB.
What I am concerned about, though, is the $4 billion cut. While we understand that the prospective aspects are troubling, two programs are cut: $835 million for modernization of public housing, though it does leave $2.5 billion in this account; $90 million for lead-based paint hazard reduction.
Mr. President, I have been concerned for some time that HUD itself, in many cities, is the biggest slum landlord in that town. It often has lead paint that has been there for a number of years, and we do know that lead paint and flaking of lead paint does have negative health damages. Also, we know that much of the public housing is obsolete and is very much in need of modernization if it is going to be fit for duty. Those two items, I believe, would give one cause and concern about that.
The other areas that I am concerned about is the issue of national service. I have often been teased and called the mother of national service, and I honor that because, you see, national service is not just one more Government program. Many might think that, but it was meant to be a new social movement. It was designed to deal with certain issues before us. No. 1, that for many college students, their first mortgage, their first debt, is their student loans. Many of our young people are loaned $10,000, $15,000, $20,000. Also, we are faced with the declining ethic of voluntarism in our society, and also such compelling need that we cannot meet it all by more Government programs.
So, therefore, what national service is--and it was a bipartisan effort that passed it; and, yes, President Clinton amplified it--it enables young people to volunteer and work in the service of the United States of America, primarily working in nonprofits, to pay off student debt, but also to make a sweat equity investment in the United States of America.
Last year, we funded it for $200 million. I believe over 20,000 volunteers are now working. It is the first year that the program is fully operational. I am concerned that the cut in national service will, No. 1, devastate the program and, No. 2, be a deterrent for volunteers, community service people, even applying because they think the money will not be there.
This is not some Great Society program. This is not a handout or another Government gimmick and social engineering. It is about instilling the habits of the heart in our young people, making sure that they help and volunteer, getting lots of benefit out of their volunteer community service. I really like the fact that it is primarily in nonprofits and not in big bureaucracies and that we now do not know the full impact of helping these young people learn these habits of the heart. Because like with the Peace Corps, long after they left volunteer service in a foreign country, they came home and kept that spirit of voluntarism right here and made important contributions in the private sector in philanthropic work. I am concerned about the cuts in national service. I could elaborate, but I believe the time is short.
I am going to yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time and see if the leadership has decided that they would like to vote.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I think there has been agreement on both sides that the vote occur at 1:15 p.m. today. I have just a few comments. I do not believe there are any further speakers on this side. I had a few comments, and after that I will be prepared, if my distinguished ranking member is, to yield the remainder of the time, ask for the yeas and nays, and ask unanimous consent that the vote be held at 1:15.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Reserving the right to object. I will not object to the consent. I have been notified that Senator Baucus of the Environment and Public Works Committee wanted to speak between 1 and 1:10. So if I could not yield back all of my time and reserve the right, should he be here, I am in absolute agreement to having the vote at 1:15.
UNANIMOUS-CONSENT AGREEMENT
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the hour of 1:15 I be recognized to offer a motion to table and that after the yeas and nays are granted, there be a vote at 1:15 on the motion to table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BOND. I thank my ranking member for accommodating me. This is a very important amendment because it does go to the philosophy of the approach that was taken in the Appropriations Committee. The ranking member has offered a different approach.
I just want to touch very briefly on a couple of things she mentioned so that my colleagues will understand what we are doing.
We took $90 million out of lead paint. Why did we do something like that? Are we not concerned about lead paint? You bet we are concerned about lead paint. There is an ongoing $10 million study of the best way to establish standards for removing lead paint. Yes, we need to get lead paint out, but we are not going to spend that $90 million until we know the best way to do it. I ask the distinguished occupant of the chair if he remembers the tremendous amount of money we spent and wasted on removing asbestos because we acted first, without thinking about it and without planning and getting the best scientific information? Yes, we took $90 million out, but it is $90 million that we cannot spend.
Modernization for public housing. Yes, we recommended taking $836 million out of the modernization fund, about 20 percent--a little more than that--and it would still leave over $3 billion. We also proposed to do something also to let local housing authorities do the modernization without playing ``mother may I'' with HUD.
HUD is an agency that cannot manage itself, and it has not done a good job of managing the decisions of local public housing authorities. I will be proposing in the authorizing committee a bill to change the way we do this and to say that unless the public housing authority fails on the basic standards that we set, the PHMAP standards we set several years ago, we are going to let them exercise their discretion in how to utilize funds made available. We believe that even with $836 million less, they can do a far better job if HUD is off their backs.
My distinguished ranking member has mentioned the national service, or AmeriCorps, a program very near and dear to her heart. Let me say that we have cut almost in half the proposed rescissions proposed by the House. The House wanted to slash it deeply. In our
[[Page S4771]] committee, we are asking that the funding be kept level so we can find out if the program works. Yes, they are spending money right now. They have hired people. We would allow them to continue throughout this year. But I think before we go charging down the road and say we can have a 40- or 50-percent increase, actually in the year beginning with the school year, we ought to find out if it works. I have had people call me and tell me about one or two instances where very good things were done. I like to encourage volunteers. There have been instances where the National Service Corps volunteers have worked with true volunteers, not people being paid, but people who are really volunteers.
I like the concept of VISTA, because VISTA enabled us to provide resources to organize volunteers. I believe in voluntarism. We have literally hundreds of millions of people who are volunteers every year, and not because they are paid in a program that provides over $25,000 a year, more than the median wage. That is not a volunteer, that is a public employment job.
I have heard other questions raised and suggestions that maybe AmeriCorps, national service corps is not working well. I suggest that we not throw a lot more money at it until we see if it works. That is why we are willing in the measure before us that was passed out of the Appropriations Committee, to let the program continue throughout this year, so we can find out how it works and to see whether the supporters, my ranking member, or the skeptics, myself and others, are right and make the decisions then.
That is the philosophy, Mr. President, that we followed, trying to cut things where spending was not critical, trying to stop commitments for new spending that will bankrupt America in the future. That is our philosophy.
I also want to mention that I have had discussions with the ranking member. We are working on a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to set up a rainy day fund or a California disaster fund, and to encourage a study of the way we do it, to begin to set aside money to start reforms in FEMA.
I believe that this is the road we must go. A report was prepared by the task force which the Senator from Ohio, Senator Glenn, and I chaired last session, to report on the confused and conflicting means that the Federal Government has gone about assisting in disasters.
Is it really assistance or have we thrown a lot of money out the door? We need to take a hard look at that disaster assistance approach and make sure that the money we spend on disasters is well spent.
There is no question about the outpouring of concern and sympathy in this body when a severe disaster strikes. And FEMA has gotten much better. They get the dollars out the door very quickly.
First, we need to look and make sure the dollars are going where they actually do some good and are not wasted; and, second, we need to keep our control on the Federal budget to make sure we do so in a responsible way.
I think something like the rainy day fund that my colleague from Maryland has suggested is a good idea, so we would set aside a set amount of money each year. We do not know where the disasters will strike. We do not know whether it is a flood, hurricane, tornado, or an earthquake. Earthquakes are not just located in California. Earthquakes can hit the east coast. Earthquakes have occurred, of a very significant magnitude, in my home State of Missouri in the Midwest.
There are many, many, types of disasters each year. They are different kinds, and we know $1 to $2 billion will be spent. Maybe we ought to have a separate line in the budget, a 14th department that is disasters, and set it aside. It could be appropriated so that it comes, not from this one subcommittee's jurisdiction, but from across the board.
I look forward to working with my colleague from Maryland and other colleagues as we attempt to reform FEMA to make sure the money is spent well and within the budget constraints.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I will support the Mikulski amendment which would replace the rescissions in the supplemental appropriations bill with a 1.72-percent across-the-board reduction of domestic spending to pay for the $6.7 billion in emergency disaster relief activities to deal with the 1994 earthquake in California.
The legislation before the Senate cuts too deeply into necessary programs, particularly those affecting children and low-income families. We should and must be prepared to pay for emergency operations of the Federal Government during such natural disasters as the earthquake, and the numerous hurricanes, floods, fires, and other disasters which like this one have national scope. Also, we should and must be prepared to reduce the size of government and to continue the budget discipline necessary to reduce the size of the Federal budget and to continue the 3 consecutive years of reduction in the Federal deficit. However, this should not be used as an excuse for a hard-
hearted and mean reduction of programs which affect the Nation's least fortunate and most vulnerable citizens, especially children, programs which the American people approve of.
I do not believe that most Americans want a cut in Head Start, education reform, the National Service College Scholarship Program--
AmeriCorps, safe and drug-free school programs, the Women, Infants, and Children Program, the Childcare Block Grant Program, title I programs to improve reading, writing, and math skills for educationally disadvantaged kids, impact aid, the TRIO Program for first generation college students, and the safe drinking water revolving fund.
Nearly 650,000 low-income children, including more than 30,000 in Michigan participate in Head Start which has been shown to increase the likelihood of healthy development, improved educational achievement and to be related to decreased involvement in criminal activity in later years. Over 600,000 young men and women will lose the opportunity for summer jobs, and 17,000 young Americans working to give something back to their communities through the national service AmeriCorps Program while receiving some assistance toward obtaining a college education will lose that chance.
The disproportionate and unfair impact of this legislation on the least fortunate among us is made all the worse by the indication that the majority in the Congress intends to use the funds to pay for a tax cut targeted to benefit the most well off. The $189 billion tax cut proposed in the Contract With America according to a Department of the Treasury analysis would provide more than 51 percent of its benefits to the wealthiest 12 percent of families.
The Mikulski amendment would also maintain funding for important projects already announced and underway, such as the EPA center in Bay City, MI, and the Job Corps Center in Flint, the CIESIN facility in Saginaw, and Sea Grant zebra mussel research.
Many important projects such as those are caught up in this rescission bill, despite the fact that they are of proven value and have already obtained strong community support and are underway.
The Milukski amendment would pay for disaster relief which under the law and the President's emergency designation need not be paid for by reductions in other spending. By paying for the relief, the deficit will be reduced. The Mikulski amendment does this in a more equitable way by effecting domestic spending broadly rather than targeted on education, children, and housing programs.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator Mikulski's amendment to replace the emergency spending and rescission bill the Senate is now considering with a more equitable across-the-
board cut. The Appropriations Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD and Independent Agencies is responsible for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's budget--but it is not and cannot be held responsible for bankrolling disaster assistance.
About half of the cuts in both the House and Senate rescission bills come from programs under the jurisdiction of the VA-HUD Subcommittee. Veterans and lower income Americans should not be asked to foot the bill for California's earthquakes or flooding in the Midwest. The burden of paying for these costly disasters should be shared among all Federal programs--not just
[[Page S4772]] those under the jurisdiction of the VA-HUD Subcommittee.
While I support the Mikulski amendment, I would have preferred that the Pentagon chip in. Senator Mikulski's across-the-board cut goes a long way toward bringing some equity to the proposed cuts. Including defense in those cuts would go even further.
Mr. MACK. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Reducing appropriations accounts across the board as proposed in the amendment would have the effect of freezing in place the spending priorities established in the previous Congress by the former majority party. We must begin the process of reordering some of the budget priorities established in the last Congress. Unless we do so, it will be virtually impossible to control spiraling Federal spending in fiscal year 1996 and beyond.
I am especially concerned that we get a handle on the looming budget crisis at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. For example, cutting spending across the board wouldn't do a thing to help us to begin controlling now future obligations to renew expiring section 8 contracts. These obligations will reach $20 billion annually by the year 2000.
This rescission package takes a reasonable approach to the HUD budget, which had been among the fastest growing in the Federal Government over the past few years. We target the HUD rescissions to new obligations and commitments, such as section 8 incremental assistance. No one currently receiving assistance should lose that assistance as a result of the rescission of this funding.
But if we fail to rein in new obligations now, it is likely that down the road--in a year or two--we may be faced with the reality of not renewing section 8 contracts or recapturing turnover section 8 units as they become available because we will not have the money to do it. That would truly represent a reduction in the housing assistance we now provide to 2.8 million families receiving section 8.
As a rule, I would agree that all budget accounts should share equally in meeting national disaster needs. However, at this point, there is merit in achieving the reductions in other ways that will reduce our future obligations.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I applaud the Senator from Maryland for her leadership on this and many other issues.
The Senator, as usual, raises arguments which are, substantively and institutionally, absolutely correct. Simply stated, the HUD-VA Subcommittee programs--for housing, veterans, and the environment--
should not be singled out to pay for emergencies which under law are to be considered emergency spending. As my colleagues know, the President has declared the catastrophes being funded in this supplemental appropriation as emergency in nature, and thus eligible for funding outside of the discretionary caps.
Since the Appropriations Committee refused to handle this emergency funding in that normal way, the VA-HUD Subcommittee was forced to drastically reduce fiscal year 1995 funding for housing programs by more than $4.6 billion, environmental funding in excess of $1.4 billion, national service $210 million, veterans programs $100 million, and NASA by $150 million. There is no rational explanation for such large reductions in already appropriated funds solely from these accounts.
As a reasonable alternative, the Senator from Maryland now seeks to impose an across-the-board cut of 1.72 percent in all discretionary funding except for veterans' medical care and a few other accounts. While I do have reservations in general about across-the-board percentage reductions and their meat-ax approach, in this case, the medicine is totally justified.
The committee bill would pay for this emergency funding by reducing housing, veterans, and environmental programs. There is simply no logic to doing this and not at the same time, equally distributing the funding reductions to other accounts. We will look back on this day and regret this action.
I do believe that we need to continue to attack the deficit aggressively, and so I continue to seek every reasonable opportunity to do that.
At the same time, I will oppose the motion to table the Mikulski amendment because of my very strong opposition to forcing multibillion-
dollar--and what must be called draconian--cuts on housing and environmental needs. This is a dangerous precedent that we set by insisting that unforeseeable, catastrophic events must be paid for solely by reductions in a very few accounts--most notably veterans, housing, the environment, NASA, and national service.
ENVIRONMENTAL SIMULATION FACILITY
Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, this amendment would unfairly rescind building and facilities money that was finally committed 2 years ago to the Environmental Simulation Facility at the University of Wyoming. Years ago, the Wyoming Legislature resolved to assist the University of Wyoming in matching the Federal grant of $9.2 million. This amendment would rescind $1.1 million, a most vital part of the commitment made by Congress to this important environmental project.
The laboratory, which is now in the final planning stages, would provide research in surface and groundwater contamination caused by agricultural chemicals. It will give us a testing facility in which we can control key environmental conditions and apply serious environmental management techniques to evaluate their effectiveness and cost. As we work to bring about increased efficiency in our agricultural conservation efforts--this facility will be of high national importance and value.
But the issue here is not whether this is a ``worthy'' project, but rather that the University of Wyoming and the State legislature have fully supported this proposal through its planning stages and now that we are nearly ready to break ground, Congress is considering pulling the plug and chucking all the time and money already spent down the drain. I would urge that you carefully consider the investments and commitments that have previously been made and vote against this amendment.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Campbell). The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BAUCUS. 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. BAUCUS. Mr. President, what is the pending business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is the Mikulski amendment.
Ms. MIKULSKI. How much time does the Senator desire? A vote is set at 1:15.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, 2 or 3 minutes.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes.
Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland.
Mr. President, the amendment by the Senator from Maryland makes sense. It is a commonsense amendment.
The Senator's amendment would spread the pain of the cuts across all areas of the government to pay for the recent natural disasters. Under the present system, all of the cuts needed to pay for these disasters must come from her Appropriations subcommittee--that is, the VA, HUD Subcommittee. That is not fair. It does not make sense to cut programs in this subcommittee over $6 billion to pay for these disasters.
Mr. President, I strongly agree that we should pay for these disaster supplementals. We should make cuts in spending to pay for them and not add to the deficit. We have to pay for them and we should pay for them. But, again, these cuts should not come only from the programs in this subcommittee.
So the amendment before us would spread these cuts across all programs. It would spread these cuts evenly.
Mr. President, I would like to briefly talk about the underlying amendment. I do not agree with many of the cuts proposed in the underlying amendment. Some programs would be dramatically cut. For example, the safe drinking water revolving loan funds that States and communities really need, or clean water funds for sewage
[[Page S4773]] and waste treatment projects that States and communities rely on.
Mr. President, we just passed an unfunded mandates bill. An unfunded mandates bill that said we are not going to add new mandates if we do not have the funds.
The result of the cuts proposed in the underlying amendment would result in a sort of defunded mandate. We will unfund mandates that exist. That is, we will take money away and dramatically cut safe drinking water revolving loan funds and waste water treatment projects.
I disagree with that. Mr. President, it seems we are not looking at the policy reasons for these cuts. Sometimes I think we make cuts simply to say we did so.
Mr. President, I have noticed that our actions around here are entirely budget driven with no thought to the policy considerations. We need to find ways to reduce spending and reduce the deficit. But we need to do it wisely. Let us stop and think before we act. Let us think about the implications of our actions.
Mr. President, I want to stress again that the amendment offered by the Senator from Maryland is an effort to reduce the budget deficit and cut spending but spread the pain around. Everybody has to be part of this effort to pay for these disasters.
Mr. President, our national motto is ``e pluribus unum,'' one out of many. We are all Americans, we are all in this together. We all have to find solutions together. That is what the people who elected us want us to do--be reasonable. Not partisan; not do just what the Republicans want to do; not do just what the Democrats want to do--but think. We need to exercise common sense.
Most people in my State of Montana do not care whether a candidate is Republican or Democrat. They vote for the person--the right person. That is what the people want us to do. I strongly urge Senators to consider the commonsense nature of the Mikulski amendment. I urge they support the able Senator from Maryland and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana for his remarks. I thank him for his support of this amendment. He has had a very difficult job, trying to bring the authorizing legislation to the floor. I know there were many roadblocks placed in the way of his excellent skills, in both content and parliamentary procedure. So I thank him for this support and upholding of the principle.
Mr. President, I have no further remarks on the content of this legislation. I think one could see the very nature of this debate is we could disagree on content, on precedent, and yet at the same time maintain great civility. I hope the Senate learned a lot in listening to the exchanges here and, of course, I hope my view prevails. But I would like, again, to thank the chairman of the subcommittee for the courtesies. We have a long row to hoe to the next fiscal year.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank my ranking member for her kind comments. We have a lot more battles to work on. We are working together on many things. I would conclude by pointing out some of the differences in our approaches.
As I said, the Senator from Maryland would cut across the board, cut across the board. Her proposal, as best we can calculate it, would take another $2.589--almost $6.2 billion in budget authority from defense and $1.243 billion, or $1,243,000,000 out of outlays for defense.
We are working right now on a defense supplemental which is vitally needed if we are not to deprive our fighting men and women of the support, the ongoing assistance, that they need. This would be a disaster. We cannot take more out of defense than we just did in the defense supplemental that is pending in conference right now.
My good friend from Montana said it makes no sense; our proposal is not policy driven. Unfortunately, he is talking about something that is not before us because we have based the recommendations in this measure brought from the Appropriations Committee on policy. He was not able to get safe drinking water authorized for the last 2 years. The money has not been used. What we are rescinding is safe drinking water money that is not even authorized. We have left in the $500 million that the administration requests for next year, in hopes we finally can get safe drinking water reauthorized. I strongly support the reauthorization. There is no sense in leaving money which cannot be spent because there is no authorization.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from Missouri is recognized for the purposes of making a motion.
Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment before us.
Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to lay on the table amendment No. 421, offered by the Senator from Maryland.
The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber who desire to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 68, nays 32, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 118 Leg.]
YEAS--68
AbrahamAshcroftBennettBingamanBondBradleyBrownBurnsByrdCampbellChafeeCoatsCochranCohenConradCoverdellCraigD'AmatoDeWineDoleDomeniciDorganFairclothFeingoldFristGortonGrahamGrammGramsGrassleyGreggHatchHatfieldHelmsHollingsHutchisonInhofeInouyeJeffordsKassebaumKempthorneKohlKylLiebermanLottLugarMackMcCainMcConnellMoynihanMurkowskiNicklesNunnPackwoodPresslerRobbRothSantorumShelbySimpsonSmithSnoweSpecterStevensThomasThompsonThurmondWarner
NAYS--32
AkakaBaucusBidenBoxerBreauxBryanBumpersDaschleDoddExonFeinsteinFordGlennHarkinHeflinJohnstonKennedyKerreyKerryLautenbergLeahyLevinMikulskiMoseley-BraunMurrayPellPryorReidRockefellerSarbanesSimonWellstone
So the motion to lay on the table the amendment (No. 421) to the amendment (No. 420) was agreed to.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. HATFIELD. Now, Mr. President, I would like to propound a unanimous-consent time agreement for the Wellstone amendment which will be now offered by the Senator from Minnesota, a 20-minute time agreement to be equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATFIELD. I yield the floor.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
Amendment No. 422 to Amendment No. 420
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Wellstone] proposes an amendment numbered 422 to amendment No. 420:
The amendment is as follows:
At the appropriate place, add the following new title:
TITLE --IMPACT OF LEGISLATION ON CHILDREN
SEC. 1. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
It is the sense of Congress that Congress should not enact or adopt any legislation that will increase the number of children who are hungry or homeless.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you, Mr. President; and I thank the clerk for reading the amendment. It is very simple and straightforward.
[[Page S4774]] Mr. President, since I have had this amendment on the floor, I believe we have had four votes, and this will be the fifth vote. The last vote, I believe, received 47 or 48 votes for the amendment. This is my effort to just make a personal, from-the-heart appeal to my colleagues. I want to give it context.
I do not think I will need more than 20 minutes because I have spoken about this amendment before, except for the fact that I think I can bring it up to date with some more evidence which is based upon what has happened in the House of Representatives, which is why I believe people in the country are looking for the U.S. Senate to really go on record to give them some assurance about what we are going to do and not do here.
Again, this amendment says:
It is the sense of the Congress that Congress should not enact or adopt any legislation that will increase the number of children who are hungry or homeless.
Mr. President, may I have order in the Chamber, please?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will be in order. The Senator may proceed
Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, yesterday, the Children's Defense Fund issued their annual report, ``The State of America's Children Yearbook, 1995.''
And, by the way, I say to my colleagues, there is a quote on the front of this report that captures the spirit of this amendment.
Dear Lord, be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small.
Mr. President, yesterday I went over these statistics. In my State of Minnesota, Minnesota's children at risk, 1989 to 1991, 60,615 children lacked health insurance. There were 27,462 reported cases of child abuse and neglect, 1992; 116 young men died by violence, 1991; 48 children were killed by guns, 1992; only 71.4 percent of 2-year-olds were fully immunized, 1990: 35 percent of the fourth grade public school students lacked basic reading proficiency, 1992.
Mr. President, I am absolutely convinced that the ultimate indictment of what we have been doing during the decade of the 1980's and, on present course, part of the decade of the 1990's, is the ways in which we have abandoned children in this Nation, not invested in children, and devalued the work of adults that work with children.
In this report, ``The State of America's Children Yearbook, 1995,'' some key facts on hunger speak directly to this amendment.
The U.S. Conference of Mayors survey of 30 cities found that emergency food requests from families with children increased by an average of 14 percent between 1993 and 1994. Emergency food requests from families with children increased by an average of 14 percent between 1993 and 1994. A record level of 14.2 million children received food stamp benefits in 1993, up 51 percent from 1989.
Please remember, Mr. President, we are now moving toward about one out of every four children being poor in America. Every 30 seconds, a child is born into poverty in our country, and one out of every two children of color are poor in the United States of America.
The Women, Infants, and Children Programs provided nutrition assistance to 6.5 million women, infants, and children in 1994, only 65 percent of those who are eligible.
Here we have a program, Mr. President, if we are going to talk about hunger and malnutrition, that makes sure that women who are expecting children have a good diet. It is a program that makes sure that children at birth, infants, have adequate nutrition, and only 65 percent of the women and children who are eligible are receiving this assistance right now.
That is why I want the U.S. Senate to go on record that surely we will not take any action that will increase the number of hungry or homelessness among children in America.
At least 2.1 million children were served by the Summer Food Service Program in 1994, less than 9 percent of those who participated in the School Lunch Program.
Mr. President, on homelessness, one in four people reported as homeless is a child younger than 18. One in four people reported as homeless is a child younger than 18. Nearly half of poor households pay more than 50 percent of their incomes for housing. An estimated 1.2 million families are on waiting lists for public housing and claims of discrimination against families with children account for 23 percent of all housing discrimination complaints.
I bring this amendment to the floor of the Senate for the fifth time with a sense of history in the making right now. Mr. President, I want to give it in context.
Last week in the House of Representatives--and let me just read, if I may, from some major newspaper stories about what was done in the House of Representatives in the name of welfare reform.
The Washington Post, Saturday, March 25, 1995. Introduction: ``It was, perhaps, an unfortunate choice of images.'' Representative--I will not use his name on the floor of the Senate--from Florida ``held up a sign on the House floor yesterday bearing the admonition `Don't Feed the Alligators'--wise advice in his State, he said, because ``if left in their natural state, alligators can take care of themselves.''
Welfare worked the same way, he explained, because
``unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency.
``Now people are not alligators,'' he added, ``but I submit that with our current handout, nonwork welfare system we've upset the natural order.''
Mr. President, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, ``Debate in House Gets Emotional and Nasty.'' And here, right at the side bar, ``Those receiving welfare were likened to animals.''
Mr. President, let us be clear who we are talking about when we are talking about welfare families, the AFDC Program. We are talking about women and children--sometimes men, but in the main, single parents and children. Likening women and children to animals is pretty vicious. In fact, I think there is no place for it.
But, Mr. President, this was the harsh rhetoric that led to some very frightening cuts.
And I would again cite another source, authoritative source, lest anybody think this amendment is just symbolic. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that this welfare reform bill would provide
$2.3 billion less for the School Lunch Program than under current law. That would mean that 2 million children would lose their school lunch in the year 2000. For Minnesota alone, 7,280 children could lose their child care by the year 2000.
By the way, I have met, I say to my colleague from Oregon, with child care providers. I had a very dramatic meeting, heartfelt testimony. They were saying to me, ``Senator, don't cut into this nutrition assistance because if we do not get that kind of funding, if we do not get that kind of funding, we are not going to be able to make sure these children have adequate nutrition.''
Mr. HATFIELD. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. HATFIELD. First all, I associate myself with the Senator's comments relating to priorities for children.
But, I say to the Senator, there is no rescission relating to any of those subjects in this bill that we now have under consideration. In fact, you will find in this bill that we have restored programs such as the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program that had a rescission.
So I think if you go through this bill, this argument, this debate, this issue would be more appropriately raised on a vehicle in which such action is proposed, but not on this vehicle.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I say to my colleague from Oregon that I appreciate his remarks. Let me make a couple of points.
I am fully aware of the fine work he has done. Let me tell you, I also had dramatic meetings with people back in Minnesota who were terrified about the zeroing out of LIHEAP, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. They, and I, are very appreciative for what the Senator has done. I appreciate some of the fine work he has done. That is why I am actually referencing this amendment based upon what was done in the House of Representatives last week.
[[Page S4775]] I have offered this sense-of-the-Senate amendment on any number of different vehicles because I fear the worst is yet to come, and I am trying to get us, the U.S. Senate, to provide some reassurance to the Nation by going on record that we do not intend to take action that will create more hunger and homelessness. This is not meant to be a direct critique or criticism of this rescissions package.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 10 minutes has expired.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I believe it was 20 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. It was 20 minutes equally divided.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I will yield time to the Senator to conclude his subject.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Senator from Oregon. I will also say to my colleague, there will be, as we go along this week, maybe this week, some alternatives and discussion about some of the specific rescissions. But this amendment, this sense-of-the-Senate amendment, is an amendment to which I am very committed.
I am taking a look at what has happened in the House of Representatives. I believe that really all eyes of the Nation are on the U.S. Senate. I think it is our responsibility to make sure that what we do as we move toward deficit reduction, as we move toward the goal of balancing the budget, though I have always argued that 2002 is an unrealistic date. I have never heard anybody, especially once you take Social Security and put it aside, talk about how you really could take $1.7 trillion out of this economy over 6 or 7 years without an enormous contraction and without inflicting widespread pain across a broad section of the population.
But I believe in the goal of balancing the budget. I certainly think we have to do better on deficit reduction. But what I am saying today, I say to my colleague from Oregon--a Senator I admire and respect and whose vote I hope to get on this--as I look at what is happening in the House of Representatives, as I analyze where these cuts are taking place, I see a tremendous amount of meanness and harshness, and there is tremendous concern in the country.
So when I read the Children's Defense Fund report, No. 1, about the state of children, when I see Minnesota children at risk, when I have come to know my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, and believe that is not what we are about but it is, in fact, worsening the situation of children in America, when I then see some of the action that has taken place in the House of Representatives and I look at the economic analysis of that action, I realize full well that if there ever was a time that people in the United States of America are looking to the U.S. Senate for balance, it is now.
If there was ever a time that people in the United States of America are looking to the U.S. Senate to make sure the Congress does not go too far, it is now. If there ever was a time that people in the United States of America are looking for some reassurance that, in the name of deficit reduction, in the name of reducing debt for our children today, who will be adults in the future, we do not savage children now, it is now. That is the why of this amendment.
I say to my colleague that as I look at the proposed cuts coming out of the House of Representatives, I ask the basic question, which is a question near and dear to people in this country, and it has to do with fairness.
I said this the other day. There is a budget deficit, but there now is a spiritual deficit. Who decided that we were going to cut into nutrition programs for children but we are not going to cut subsidies for oil companies?
Who decided that we were going to eliminate benefits or dramatically reduce benefits for disabled children? I am now meeting with their families from Minnesota, and they are terrified. I do not want anybody in the Senate to say I have tried to frighten people. People are calling me and people are terrified on the basis of what they read.
Who decided to cut into support for disabled children in this country but not to cut subsidies for pharmaceutical companies?
Who decided to cut into educational programs for children but not to cut into subsidies for coal companies?
I will say it one more time, some people are very generous with the suffering of others.
So I say to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, this is the fifth time that I have brought this sense-of-
the-Senate amendment to the floor. When I brought this amendment to the floor at the beginning of the Congress, there were colleagues who said this is just symbolic.
Each time I have brought this amendment to the floor of the Senate, I have referred to the House of Representatives. This does not directly reference the work of the Senator from Oregon in this rescissions bill. I have some concerns about some of the housing cuts, to be sure. But I understand the job that you have done, and I respect what you have done. But this is an amendment that fits in with what is going on in this Congress.
I say to my colleagues, my colleague from Oregon and my colleague from Mississippi, both of whom I respect, that I really believe that people are looking to us for balance. People are really looking to the U.S. Senate to make sure we do not go too far. People are really looking to the U.S. Senate to make sure that this does not become a mean season on children.
People are looking for reassurance. I have tried to get a majority vote. I made a promise to myself, I made a promise to my colleagues, I made a promise to children's advocates, I made a promise to children that I will keep bringing this amendment to the floor of the Senate to have votes.
I will conclude by reading this one more time:
It is the sense of the Congress that Congress should not enact or adopt any legislation that will increase the number of children who are hungry or homeless.
I do not know why we cannot support that. The last time, Mr. President, there were a number of my colleagues from the other side who supported this amendment. It is my fervent hope that today I can get a majority vote. I think it would be a wonderful message. I think it would be reassuring to people in the country.
I have no ``hidden agenda.'' I just feel strongly about what these statistics mean in personal terms. I just feel strongly that part of what we are doing in this Congress is going in the wrong direction. I just feel strongly that if there is going to be deficit reduction and we are going to move toward balancing the budget, we ought not go the path of least political resistance.
You have been a leader, I say this to the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, on these issues. This is no lecture aimed at you. You are somebody who I look up to. But my concern is that what is going to happen, Mr. President, is that when it gets down to where these cuts take place, we are going to go the path of least political resistance. That is to say, all too often the cuts are going to be aimed disproportionately at those citizens who are least able to tighten their belts. But the reason they are going to be aimed disproportionately at citizens least able to tighten their belts, starting with children--I can also include the elderly and also include other citizens--is because they do not have the political clout. They are not considered to be the heavy hitters. They are not considered to be the players. They are not the big campaign contributors. They are all too often invisible. They are all too often faceless. They are all too often voiceless.
But there is a lot of goodness in this country, and there is a lot of goodness in this Chamber. I think that if the U.S. Senate goes on record just supporting the sense-of-the-Senate amendment that I have offered today, it will be a positive, unifying vote for this Nation.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, what is the time left?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon has less than 1 minute.
Mr. HATFIELD. 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. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
[[Page S4776]] Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes to close.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I understand the thrust of the amendment of the Senator, and I do not think anybody can disagree with the essence of it. It is a sense of the Senate, or a sense of the Congress. Let me also indicate, Mr. President, I think the message that the Senator wants to send to the public is that we have stated an action in this bill, for we have not in this bill rescissions relating to the subject matter of children. Therefore, I think we can say that this is a powerful statement the Congress is sending to the people as well.
I want to just indicate two or three items as an example of the focus the Senate Appropriations Committee put on the rescissions. First, the rescissions were basically in the unobligated funds. Second, we were not only concerned about children and young people. We have in this a far, far different document than the rescissions on student aid, as it relates to the elderly and the needs of the elderly and low-income energy assistance.
I think this document represents a very powerful statement to the public of this country that we have put a focus upon people's needs, and that we have shown the compassion, the concerns, for people's needs in this particular document.
At the same time, we have reduced our spending for this particular fiscal year by $13.5 billion.
So I am ready to accept the amendment offered by the Senator as a sense of the Congress and take it to conference.
I thank the Senator for his compassion and for his passionate plea on behalf of this. I think it certainly is in concert and certainly represents the work of the Appropriations Committee in focusing upon people's needs--not just children, but the elderly and other people, as well.
Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator may have another minute.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, actually, what I would like to do is I would like to get to this vote. But first I would like to suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WELLSTONE. 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. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague, the distinguished chair of the Appropriations Committee. I have been at this a long time with this amendment, and I am very, very pleased with this result.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question now occurs on the amendment.
The amendment (No. 422) was agreed to.
Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
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