Volume 148, No. 72 covering the 2nd Session of the 107th Congress (2001 - 2002) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Senate section on pages S5025-S5027 on June 5, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I appreciate the statement of the Senator from North Dakota, the chairman of the Budget Committee, and certainly the statement just made by my friend, the distinguished Senator from Michigan, Ms. Stabenow.
I spend a lot of time in the Chamber, and I really enjoy it. That is my job. I appreciate my ability to do that, that other Senators give me that responsibility. But there are days such as today and yesterday and Monday that I am concerned we are not doing enough in this body. I don't know why this is being slow-walked, as has been described in today's press. I am not making this up. It is right here in the Congressional Quarterly:
Senate Republicans say they will not hesitate to slow walk legislation important to Democrats.
But as the Senator from Michigan stated, if we passed a prescription drug benefit for seniors--it would be great if we could do it for everyone, but let's say we do it for seniors on Medicare--they wouldn't know to whom to give credit, whether it be Democrats or Republicans, but they would be happy they got something. Conversely, our doing nothing, the blame goes to both parties. There is no advantage that anyone gets by not moving forward on legislation.
Pick up the newspaper anytime you want--today. I don't have a clip from today's paper, but it is easy to find one. Here is one, May 23. It was in my desk. I was cleaning out my desk as the Senator was speaking:
The Department of Transportation has issued a warning about attacks on rail and transit systems across the country, law enforcement officials said on Thursday. The Department's warning, sent out Wednesday, was consulted by the Department of Transportation.
The reason that is important is this bill that we are now working on has a provision in it for security. We have almost $1 billion for port security. We have $200 million for security at nuclear weapons facilities. We have $154 million for cyber-security, and border security.
I am a member of the Appropriations Committee. I voted for the bill that came out of committee. But as with all Senators, you don't have an opportunity to read everything in a bill. The bill that came out is not a very big bill. It is 117 pages. I could read the bill easily in a half hour and really understand everything in it. If there is something that people do not like in the bill, they should try to get rid of it.
I think we are doing a disservice to the people of my State of Nevada and the country by not moving forward on this. There is no political advantage. I don't know if we can get cloture tomorrow. If we don't get cloture tomorrow, we will go again and try it some other time.
I don't know what benefit there is of the big stall that is taking place. I think it is a disservice to the country. I have tried on various occasions during the last several days, I have offered unanimous consent requests that we limit the number of amendments. I have offered unanimous consent requests that we have a finite list of amendments. It doesn't matter how many, but let us know how many so the managers can work to cut this down.
I am very disillusioned with what is happening. I say to the American people that they should send a message to their Senators to move forward on this legislation. This legislation is for further recovery in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States.
I will bet the State of Georgia is hurting for money as a result of some of the spending on antiterrorism, and the State of Nevada. There were a lot of things we were spending money on prior to September 11. We did it to make it a safer place. But for our ports, highways, schools, and other things, we are doing more. Nevada and Georgia and other States are eating those costs themselves.
There is money in this bill to help States, as there should be. We are spending lots of money in Nevada training first responders. There is $1 billion in this bill, including funds for firefighting grants, State and local law enforcement grants, grants to help State and local police to better coordinate their operations, fire and medical personnel, emergency planning grants, and search and rescue training. There is much that will help my State.
Frankly, time is of the essence. We would be much better off if this bill had passed last week. We would be better off if it had passed before we took our break for the Memorial Day recess. With each day that goes by, the hard-earned money of the taxpayers of Nevada is being spent. They need help on programs. What is another day? Another day means one more firefighter who is not trained. It means one more police officer who needs additional training. This is not done in a vacuum.
On September 11, the actions of evil people killed about 3,000 men, women, and children--women who were pregnant.
What has happened here is a clear illustration of: Do we really care about those people who are dead? I can't in my mind's eye understand the terror that went through the minds of those innocent people on this airplane who died in an awful way.
That is what this legislation is all about. Can we stop some of that? Of course we can.
There is $125 million for border security. There is $100 million so the Environmental Protection Agency can check the vulnerability and assessment of water systems. We have water in Nevada, as we have everyplace. You just pull it out of the lake. We have reservoirs. We can pull the water out of the reservoir. If these evil people would fly an airplane into a building killing not only the people on the airplane but the people in the building, certainly they wouldn't hesitate in a second to poison water and sicken and kill people.
We need to move forward. I am terribly disappointed that we are not moving forward.
I don't know why the President isn't involved. They came down here yesterday with a Statement of Administration Policy. The Statement of Administration Policy indicates that there are five or six provisions they don't like in the bill. I have no problem with that. The President of the United States has a right to tell us what he doesn't like. But what I don't like is people coming in saying the President is going to veto this bill. There is nothing to veto. If we pass this bill at 6 o'clock tonight, there will be nothing to veto. There is no bill. There is no legislation. We want to get to the House of Representatives so that we can meet and come up with a bill that he can then veto, if he wants to. But as Senator Stevens said yesterday, it doesn't happen.
We are going to work something out to make the President happy. That is the way it works. We are not going to send him an appropriations bill--especially an emergency supplemental bill--that he doesn't like. He can't use this as an excuse.
My friend from Minnesota is in the Chamber. I am grateful that he came here tonight. I hope tomorrow cloture will be invoked and that we can move forward on this bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Nevada.
First of all, I assume tomorrow there will be time to talk about the supplemental bill. I will not use a lot of time, but we want to finish this work. I am anxious to make a statement on Colombia. Tonight, I would like to talk about this delay. Am I correct there will probably be time to talk about this bill tomorrow?
Mr. REID. If cloture is invoked, there will be 30 hours, of which you will have an hour of your own.
Mr. WELLSTONE. I hope we will not have to do that.
The only thing I would like to say about this supplemental and where we are is I will refer to an article that the Presiding Officer, Senator Miller, wrote in the New York Times. There is a lot of work to do here. I think people are becoming increasingly impatient because we are supposed to be here to advocate people, and help and work for people. I think the supplemental bill is a really good bill.
I was here the other day talking about one of the most important features that Senator Reid was talking about--homeland defense and bumping up veteran health care to the tune of about $240-plus million. There are gaping holes in this VA health care. It is serious. It is very serious. We have very long waiting lines right now for primary care and for specialty care. We have a moratorium on any additional community clinics. Everybody says they are for the veterans.
Frankly, if you get beyond the Fourth of July and Memorial Day and Veterans Day, the way to speak for veterans is to live up to our commitment to make sure they get good health care coverage which they and their families deserve and expect. That is just one feature in this bill. It is important.
What bothers me the most is this strategy of delay. It is 10 to 6. We are not going to have any more votes. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have pretty much blocked everything for now. We should be having debate and votes, and we should be moving forward. We should pass this bill. People can vote up or down. We have a lot of other priorities.
Again, the Presiding Officer has talked about prescription drugs. In Minnesota, about as important an issue as I can think of is affordable prescription drugs.
Frankly, I also like the proposal, and I am part of this work of reimportation from Canada because there, by strict FDA safety guidelines, you are helping seniors and other working families who cannot afford the price.
But let's get on with the work. Let's have the debate relevant to people's lives, vote up or down, be held accountable--representative democracy at its very best, not at its worst.
Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are just delaying and delaying, slowing the Senate. The Senate machinery is geared to grind slowly, but what is going on is just an effort to make the Senate a nondecisionmaking body. I do not think we do well for people when we are not a decisionmaking body.
There are those--I am a big advocate--who want to raise the minimum wage. I understand we are going to be dealing with hate crimes legislation, which I think we should.
For my own part, I would put right up there with affordable prescription drugs wanting to get back to funding education because my State of Minnesota believes they have been cheated out of $2 billion they should have had for the next 10 years. We did it in the Senate; it got blocked in conference committee. The House Republican leaders and the White House opposed it. That would have been a glidepath, full funding for the special education program over the next 5 years, then maintaining that for the next 5 years past that. It would have been $2 billion more for Minnesota.
Since a lot of our school districts have had to take money from other programs to fund special education because they have not gotten Federal money, 50 percent of it would have been fungible for special education, afterschool, more teaching assistants to help kids who are not doing as well in reading or math, being better able to recruit teachers, being better able to keep teachers, there is important work to do here.
We are not the main player in K-12, but this is a place where we could really make a commitment, and should.
I am anxious to get on with the appropriations process. I am anxious to get funding for education. I am anxious to talk about education and kids. Frankly, I am anxious to talk about education, prekindergarten all the way through age 65, because I think that is the way we should define education. A lot of our students in Minnesota are 55 and going back to school. They have lost their jobs. They worked for the taconite industry on the range. LTV shut down, and they are going back to school so they can get different sets of skills for different employment opportunities to support their families.
So I would put it to you this way: As I see it, the early years, starting with the little ones, who are all under 4 feet tall and beautiful--we should be nice to them. That is prekindergarten and the early elementary school years. We want to make sure every kid in our country has an equal opportunity. Education is so important.
Then, when people get older, out of school, it is the jobs, decent wages, health care coverage. Then, when people get older than that, it is Medicare, it is Social Security, it is not losing your pension. There is the whole issue of pension reform so we do not see more people cheated and some of them financially destroyed with more Enron kinds of situations.
All of this is before us: pension reform legislation, getting it right for health care, reimbursement, Medicare. A lot of our hospitals in rural Minnesota are being killed right now from inadequate Medicare reimbursement. Hospital people have been here talking about what is going to happen to our ability to deliver care. Children's Hospital here--what is going to happen with cuts in medical education?
Other people are talking about more funding, expanding health care coverage, prescription drugs, education, raising the minimum wage, going after hate crimes, ending the discrimination.
I will finish this way. Tomorrow, we are going to have close to 2,000 people here from around the country; families who have struggled with mental illness. By the way, I do not know that there is a person in the Senate who does not know someone in their own family or a friend who has to struggle with this illness, saying: Treat it like any other illness. End the discrimination in this coverage. Don't tell us that if our daughter is struggling with depression, and we are scared to death she might take her life, that the health insurance plan will cover a couple of days in the hospital and that is it; a couple visits to the doctor and that is it. Treat this illness as any other illness. End the discrimination.
We want to bring this bill to the floor of the Senate. It is bipartisan. Senator Domenici has been the leader. I have been fortunate enough to join him. We have 66 Senators. We have the majority of the House on board.
There is a lot of important legislation we can pass that will lead to the improvement of the lives of people we represent.
I come to the floor tonight just to express some indignation at this delay, delay, delay strategy, slowing the Senate up, making it a nondecisionmaking body, because I think we are not at our best when we operate that way.
I just as soon have at it, have the debate, have the amendments, bring the legislation up for votes; vote yes, vote no. If you want to filibuster, filibuster; have the votes or don't have the votes. But what colleagues are doing now, at 6 o'clock at night--all gone, and will not let us vote on anything else--is making the Senate a nondecisionmaking body.
Frankly, there is a whole lot we could do to help people. The reason we are here is to help people. We might have different definitions of what it means to help people, so then let's have a debate about that. But, for God's sake, let's deal with the relevant legislation that affects people's lives. And let's do it now. Let's not just continue to grind away and slow everything down and block everything and make it impossible for us to move forward.
Mr. REID. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. WELLSTONE. I am pleased to yield.
Mr. REID. The Senator would agree, would he not, that doing nothing does not meet the needs of the people of Minnesota, the people of Nevada, or anyplace in this country?
Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Nevada, only if you believe that we are here to do nothing is doing nothing defensible in any way, shape, or form. And that is what we are doing right now. Because if you want to gum up the works here in the Senate and block everything and basically make it impossible for us to move forward--which is what our Republican colleagues have done--you can do that. But I will tell you, the people we represent will not be pleased with us if we operate this way.
Mr. REID. Does the Senator know that in this morning's Daily Monitor there is a quote from a Republican--in fact, that is not true. It says:
``Senate Republicans say they will not hesitate to slow-walk legislation important to Democrats.''
Mr. WELLSTONE. I am sorry. They will not----
Mr. REID. `` . . . they will not hesitate to slow-walk legislation important to Democrats.'' Is the Senator aware of that statement that was made?
Mr. WELLSTONE. Well, see, I would say to my colleague--and he might disagree about this--there are two different issues here. Listen, if you think a piece of legislation is egregious, and you know the rules, have at it, slow it up. Fine. I have done that. I do not want to be inconsistent.
But when you have a statement like this, which says: We will not be reluctant to slow up legislation that is important to Democrats, then you are playing a different kind of game. Then it is straight partisanship. It has nothing to do with whether you feel strongly about it. It has more to do with a strategy of basically being able to say: Aha, a majority in a Democrat-run Senate can't get the job done because we will make sure they can't get the job done.
That is not acceptable. Do you know what that is? That is inside party strategy, total reelection stuff, which then means we do not pass affordable prescription drug legislation, we do not get it right for education, we do not get it right on a whole bunch of other issues that are important to people.
Mr. REID. Finally, would the Senator agree that this legislation now before the Senate that is being slow-walked, as the distinguished Senator from Texas said yesterday, and he reminded me he said it today, he felt it was important to ``slow the train down''--would the Senator agree that it is not good for the country to slow-walk or ``slow the train down,'' the Supplemental Appropriations Act for further recovery from and response to terrorist attacks on the United States?
This is an emergency supplemental bill. Does the Senator believe this is something we should be moving expeditiously?
Mr. WELLSTONE. I will just say this to my colleague from Nevada. There are two sets of issues people have, and both of them deal with security. There is an uneasiness about economic security, about the future, about jobs, pensions, good education for kids, health care. It is all there.
The other thing is that people--and with considerable justification--
are really worried about physical security. Look what we have been through. People want to make sure that we are going to be able to do everything possible to best defend ourselves, everything possible to head off any kind of attack, everything possible to protect them, to protect their children.
So all of the money for Minnesota and all the other States in the country, for homeland defense, I do not think the people view as a waste. I do not know what the problem is in moving this matter forward. I think people in Minnesota and the people in the country--if they know; and we will make sure they know--disapprove, and for good reason.
I came to the floor to call on my colleagues to get going. Let's do the work. Let's get involved in the work of democracy. Let's not just do delay, delay, delay, all for the sake of some party strategy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Dayton). The Senator from Washington.
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