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THE CONTINUING RESOLUTION (Senate - September 28, 1996)

[Page: S11624]

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I rise today with a sense of both joy and disappointment as I am being briefed by my staff about what is the purported agreement for the continuing resolution that will fund our country for the next year. There are, indeed, some very good parts of that bill. But I have to say that the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Gregg, made a compelling speech this morning about many of the fine points of this bill that are atrocious, and talking about dealing with the administration, the administration which changed the negotiating points constantly throughout this process. I think it is a sad way that we are going to end this session, that the administration has come in at virtually the last hour and held the threat of shutting down Government and blaming the Republican Congress for doing it, in an effort to win things that have been lost on the floor already.

So, it is with mixed feelings that I rise to talk about what is in this bill, both good and bad. I am very pleased that we are going to satisfy the basic responsibilities that we must. We are going to support our troops in the Mideast and in Bosnia. But we are going to do it with $1 billion less than we had hoped we could have in our defense budget because this is not a safe world. As we were sending troops into the Middle East--because in many ways it looks as if we did not have a clear policy on the Kurds, but nevertheless we sent troops in to reinforce--as we were doing it, the administration was asking us to cut the defense budget. We are going to be able to do the basic things that we need to do, but we are not making the plans for the future that we must make for our country to be secure from incoming ballistic missiles, in theaters, wherever our forces may be, to be secure from incoming ballistic missiles. We are not doing what we ought to be doing to plan for the future strength of our military so we will remain ready for any contingencies that might occur.

We are not planning as we should. I hope that next year, when the elections are over, we will be able to commit the amount of money and resources we need, first, to make sure that America stays secure and strong and, second, that we will protect our troops from disasters like the bombing that we saw just a few months ago in Saudi Arabia.

We are going to give pay raises to our young men and women in the military, who so richly deserve them, 3 percent pay raises. That is a good part of this bill. But we are not planning enough for their future with ballistic missile defenses and other major pieces of equipment and technologies that would look to the future so an incoming ballistic missile can be stopped before it goes into its downward track.

Mr. President, we are going to increase with this bill funding for breast cancer research, a long time coming. Women's diseases in this country have been made short shrift by Congresses of the past, but not in this Congress. This Congress has increased funding for breast cancer research and osteoporosis research, diseases that particularly afflict women in our country, and I am proud that we are doing that.

We are going to more fairly distribute the money for Amtrak in our country. I fought hard for that, and I appreciate the fact that all of us came together on a bipartisan basis to strengthen Amtrak for our country and to give all of the States that were told 2 months ago they would lose their service of Amtrak, including my State of Texas, but many States across the western part of our country.

We were told that we would have 90 days and these routes would be gone. Mr. President, 90 days is not enough for a State to be able to come in and add funding, resources to keep lines like this open. You have to have better planning. Most States have biennial legislatures. My State certainly does, and I wanted a 6-month extension to give all of us a chance to see if the States can come up with a better plan to help keep Amtrak service in our States, because I believe in a balanced transportation system, and I believe Amtrak is a major part of that.

Because I like the idea that we can have a bus feeder system into Amtrak stations so that people who do not have the mobility that many in our urban areas have will have access from the small communities of our country into the Amtrak stations, into our cities and our mass transit systems, and into our airports. That is what Amtrak can be if we can get a good system for Amtrak where the States and the Federal Government come together. So this bill does fund a 6-month extension for those important Amtrak lines that were told that they would close.

We are going to increase funding for medical research, including AIDS. AIDS is an epidemic in this country, and it is time that we realize it is hitting children, babies, as well as people from all walks of life. It is a tragedy, and we should be increasing our commitment to finding out what causes this deadly virus so that we can do something to save the lives of innocent people, and we are doing that.

We are putting major resources into antiterrorism measures and also drug interdiction.

Mr. President, we have been hearing just recently in the last 6 months about incredible statistics showing that drug abuse is now going back up among our teenagers and, even worse, Mr. President, under teenagers--under teenagers. Our children, starting at the age of 9, are abusing drugs in this country. This is a crime, it is a disease, and we must get rid of it. So our bill will put the resources into that.

But I am very concerned about the illegal immigration bill and what the administration did in negotiating that bill. That bill passed this body months ago. We had a strong bipartisan effort for a bill that does give us the tools to stop illegal immigration into our country that costs our taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. It was told to us that the bipartisan bill would be signed. It was told to us by the President that he would sign the bill. Yet, after that representation was made, he came in with the threat that he would shut down Government and blame the Republicans for it and reopen the illegal immigration bill that had bipartisan support in this Congress.

It appears that that bill has been changed and some of the key provisions have been taken out, such that a person on welfare would be able to bring other immigrants into this country and supposedly vouch that they would not become dependent on taxpayer resources. A person who is dependent on taxpayer resources saying that they will support another person coming into our country and that they will not be supported by taxpayer resources, how naive can we be?

Mr. President, I am hoping that this Senate will be able to vote on a bill, that we have already passed in both Houses of Congress, on Monday that will put those key provisions back in to the illegal immigration bill so that we will have teeth in it and we will protect the taxpayers from people who would come to this country with their hand out rather than coming to this country in the spirit and tradition of the legal immigrants looking for the opportunity to do better for themselves and for this country.

I am very concerned that we would renegotiate the bill on illegal immigration that gives us the chance, finally, to say it means something to be a legal immigrant in this country, because if you come in illegally, there will be a price to pay and that price is that you will not be able to come into our country and seek citizenship for 10 years if you have broken the laws of our country by entering illegally.

I hope that we can pass the illegal immigration bill in its entirety on Monday and that we will not succumb to the pressures from the White House to renegotiate a bill that the President said he would sign after it had already been agreed to by both Houses of this Congress on a bipartisan basis.

I commend our majority leader, Senator Lott, who came in to his job quite suddenly just a few months ago without very much notice and, yet, has fought so hard to make Congress live up to its responsibility to the people of our country and pass the laws that will improve the lives of the people of our country and improve accountability to the people of our country. He has said we must fund our Government in a responsible way, and he set out to make that happen.

So with very little experience, our majority leader has done an incredible job of making sure that we do not let the people of our country down, but it has been made a very difficult chore for him by a constantly moving negotiation.

We talked about the great sports metaphor using the goal posts. As the distinguished Senator from Wyoming said yesterday, we not only moved the goal posts, we moved the whole game. We moved it out of the stadium by acceding to a President's wishes who would not say, `A deal is a deal,' and kept saying, `A deal is a deal, but what more can I get?'

So, Mr. President, I hope that, if this continuing resolution passes, we can reform the procedures here and that we can have a President whose word is good so that we will be able to become accountable to the taxpayers of our country, let the taxpayers know that they are getting their money's worth and that the test will be able to stand the light of day. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

[Page: S11625]



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