The Work of the Senate

May 22, 1998

This week we conclude another work period by disappointing the American people. We recess, again, without concluding the people’s business and passing a strong tobacco bill. Tobacco legislation is now added to the litany of important matters the Congress has left unfinished.

Last month, the Congress adjourned without even completing the federal budget and this month we recess, again, without concluding even that basic action.

Most Americans think of April 15 as the day that they file their tax returns and pay their taxes, and most Americans dutifully collect their financial records and go through the sometimes arduous task of preparing their tax returns. I hope that next year and in the years ahead that task will be made a little easier by legislation I have sponsored to require the IRS to post information and forms on the Internet, along with regulations and rulings.

Well, April 15 was also the legal deadline for Congress to have passed a budget resolution. While the Senate did some preliminary work on a flawed proposal earlier this year, Congress is recessing, again, without completing this fundamental task-- another duty ignored, another legal requirement violated.

I hope that as Congress returns from its Memorial Day break it will complete work on a balanced budget to serve the American people without additional delay. It should be balanced in two senses: It should be a balanced series of proposals to meet the health, education, environmental and law enforcement needs of the country. And it will also, for the first time in almost three decades, be a balanced budget that will not rely on deficit financing.

I recall all too well last year when we were told that we could never achieve a balanced budget without a constitutional amendment. I recall the stacks of deficit-laden federal budgets proposed by Republican and Democratic Presidents since President Johnson and being told that the only answer to annual budget deficits was to pass an ill-conceived constitutional amendment whose terms and effects could not be explained. I defended the Constitution then and this year President Clinton sent us the first balanced budget in almost 30 years.

With the cooperation of the Republican leadership in the Congress we can enact the first balanced budget since 1969, and we will have done it without inserting a fiscal straightjacket into the text of the United States Constitution. They said it could not be done, but it can and will as a result of the sound fiscal policies of this Administration which have lead not only to balance but to the prospect of budget surplus. In 1993, a Democratic Congress put us on the right road to fiscal responsibility when we took the hard votes and passed the President’s plan. Congress should culminate that extraordinary 5-year effort without further delay.

Completing action on the budget is the first step toward Congress taking action on the annual appropriations bills that are so important to the government programs that protect the environment and assist State and local governments with education and law enforcement. Republican Congressional leadership is well-known for shutting down the government by not completing work on these basic measures in a timely way.

Those contracting with the government, working in partnership with government services and those dependent on government services deserve better. Americans deserve piece of mind and the assurances that their government is working. Congress needs to complete its appropriations so that the agencies and service providers can plan programs, pay staff and work with the American public in an effective manner.

It is high time for the congressional leadership to do its job and for the Congress to get on about the business of governing.

Congress should not be taking breaks without having completed the work of the people. Such callous disregard for the needs of the American people has become too much the rule as year after year under Republican leadership Congress recesses without having completed its work on emergency supplementals, budgets, and appropriations bills.

The Senate has also failed to take action to end the judicial emergency in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On March 25, the five continuing vacancies on the 13-member court caused Chief Judge Ralph Winter to certify a Circuit emergency, to begin canceling hearings and to take the unprecedented step of having 3-judge panels convened that include only one Second Circuit judge.

I have been urging favorable Senate action on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Second Circuit to fill a longstanding vacancy. That nomination remains stalled on the Senate calendar. Before the last recess I introduced legislation calling upon the Senate to address this kind of judicial emergency before it takes another extended recess. The Senate has pending before it four outstanding nominees to the Second Circuit whose confirmations would end this crisis.

Unfortunately Republican Senate leadership has not taken the judicial vacancies crisis seriously and has failed to take the concerted action needed to end it. They continue to perpetuate vacancies in almost one in 10 federal judgeships.

With 11 nominees on the Senate calendar and 32 pending in Committee, we could be making a difference if we would take our responsibilities to the federal courts seriously and devote the time necessary to consider these nominations and confirm them. Instead, we are having hearings at a rate of one a month, barely keeping up with attrition and hardly making a dent in the vacancies crisis that the Chief Justice of the United States has called the most serious problem confronting the judiciary.

We began this legislative year prepared finally to make progress on issues campaign finance reform, tobacco legislation and juvenile crime legislation. Republican leadership has lead to inaction on all three.

On the issue of campaign finance reform, Democrats and some notable Republicans have been prepared to attack the soft money that so pervades the current system. Rather than close the loopholes and correct the system, the Republican leadership has chosen to close the debate and perpetuate the status quo.

On tobacco legislation, we have an important opportunity to make real progress. Now that the courts have moved to disclose the secret documents from the industry’s efforts to hide the nature of nicotine addiction and their marketing efforts to children, now that the tobacco companies’ lobbying stranglehold on Congress has been loosened, and now that we have demonstrated that the majority of the Senate agrees with Senator Gregg and me that we need not grant special legal protections to tobacco companies in order to enact legislation that can make a difference, it is time for the Senate to move forward. We should be passing strong tobacco legislation.

Since the first week on the year I have been urging attention to the matter of juvenile crime. When the Judiciary Committee reported a misguided bill last year, I noted the improvements that had been made in the Committee’s consideration and the aspects that needed to change for us to develop a legislative consensus that could help State and local law enforcement in the battle against juvenile crime.

We have heard for months this would be a priority this Congress. Instead of reaching across the aisle and working to develop a consensus, some have limited themselves to Republican-only Dear Colleague letters and seeking to pick off a few Democratic allies. Juvenile crime should not be a Republican or Democratic issues. There are things we can do to assist State and local law enforcement without partisanship and by consensus.

After school programs and crime prevention programs should be central to those efforts. I hope that the Senate Republican leadership will join in a truly bipartisan effort.

We still face the same problems and challenges with which we began the year. We need to make progress on encryption policy and we need to promote personal privacy in the electronic age.

Given the lack of attention to congressional responsibilities and the real problems of working families in the first half of this session, I fear what the remainder of this year may hold.

I expect the Republican leadership will find time for some carefully choreographed media efforts and will make time for more personal attacks against the President and the First Lady. In an election year, I will not be surprised if they look to rewrite the Constitution of the United States through a series of popular-sounding amendments.

I hope that the Republican majority will find the time to make progress on the legislative agenda that can make a difference in the lives of American people and lead to economic opportunity in the coming century.