Senate Coverage(2-2 to 2-6-04)

Morning, Zell Miller on C-SPAN 1.

EXCERPTS FROM DAVID KAY TESTIMONY -- (Senate - February 03, 2004)

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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, with respect to the other subject which I wish to briefly deal with, this afternoon several of our Democratic colleagues have criticized the President and the administration and invoked the name of David Kay, a weapons inspector, to make the point that they claim proves the administration somehow misled the American people and the rest of the world in making the case for taking military action against Iraq. That is not true. I think it is time people start quoting David Kay properly to see just exactly what he said. I am briefly going to do that.

I have a few excerpts from his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 28 of this year. Senator McCain asked him this question:

[Y]ou agree with the fundamental principle here that what we did was justified and enhances the security of the world by removing Saddam Hussein from power?

David Kay:

Absolutely.

Senator Kennedy asked this interesting question:

Many of us feel that the evidence so far leads to only one conclusion: that what has happened was more than a failure of intelligence, it was the result of manipulation of the intelligence to justify a decision to go to war. .....

David Kay responding:

All I can say is if you read the total body of intelligence in the last 12 to 15 years that flowed on Iraq, I quite frankly think it would be hard to come to a conclusion other than Iraq was a gathering, serious threat to the world with regard to WMD.

And WMD, as we know, is weapons of mass destruction.

How about its violations of the United Nations resolutions? Somehow the impression has been created that maybe it was just a fraud, that Iraq

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really wasn't in violation of those resolutions, that somehow the weapons of mass destruction never existed. Here is what David Kay said:

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities: one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence, and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it, and they hid material.

Going on:

Iraq was in clear material violation of 1441. They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their program. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing was illegal. I hope we find even more evidence of that.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if we are going to be quoting David Kay and talking about the state of our intelligence, go to the transcript and present a more fair and balanced picture than has been done today.

INTELLIGENCE INVESTIGATION -- (Senate - February 03, 2004)

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Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I think we need to respond to some of what has been said here this morning because the implication is very disturbing. It is not just that some of the intelligence of the United States--and by the way, all of the other intelligence agencies around the world might not have been totally accurate--but that somebody might have been misleading us. That is the charge. That is the implication. It leads to this notion we could not trust the President to look into what might have been wrong with the intelligence, that there is a ``shadow of suspicion'' here.

Well, the shadow of suspicion is being cast by our colleagues on the other side by the innuendo that is throughout the comments they have been making here this morning and that we have read elsewhere. I think that is a very bad thing. Especially when our troops are fighting abroad trying to win this war on terror, to suggest that not

only is the intelligence we are gathering not entirely accurate but that there were deliberate attempts by people in the administration to mislead the American people, and to mislead the Congress, that, I think, is what is very disturbing.

What are some of the strains of that? I heard one of them on the radio this morning: Well, Vice President Cheney went down to the CIA and talked to them. He must have been trying to intimidate them to come up with some preordained conclusion to sort of cook the books a little bit.

There is no evidence of that whatsoever. David Kay has discounted that as a possibility. Nobody from the intelligence agencies, under questioning, has suggested that was the case.

Indeed, the question is, if the Vice President had not gone down to the intelligence agencies and asked the tough questions of the CIA people, and said, are you sure you are correct about this, then our friends on the other side would be complaining the administration did not even bother to doublecheck the information. So when politics are involved, you cannot win. But I do not think we should allow these suspicions from the political side of things to dictate the kind of action we take.

Another question: Secretary Powell went to the CIA. I think he spent something like 3 days with them, with these people going over and over and over the evidence, saying: Are you absolutely certain of this? And remember, before he made his presentation to the United Nations, he took some of the material out, some of the material he did not think was verifiable, that they could not nail down well enough. He wanted to make sure what he took to the United Nations was solid.

The Vice President and the Secretary of State are not the only people who have been involved. We have intelligence from other countries, such as the Israelis, the British. We have the United Nations itself, and the inspectors who came back with their reports.

At the end of the day, the reason why the international community passed resolutions asking for Saddam Hussein to comply with his commitment to come clean on what he had was because the whole world thought he had these weapons of mass destruction.

Now, since then, we have not been able to find everything. We have found some things. But one of the things we have not found are the chemical artillery shell warheads. We thought those were going to be used against our troops. Every day the war occurred, we were briefed on the so-called red line, the point at which we thought the Iraqis were going to shoot artillery shells with chemical weapons at our troops. Our troops had to put on all the heavy equipment in order to try to fight through that if, in fact, the attack occurred, and there was some surprise when it did not occur. We had to, of course, bomb the warehouses we thought it was in. We bombed the artillery pieces. We sent millions of leaflets to the commanders saying: Don't you dare fire chemical weapons at our troops or we will take you before the criminal court when this is all done. We disrupted their command and control, and we thought that is what prevented them from firing those artillery shells. But the point is, we thought they had them. We thought they were going to be used against our troops.

This was not a matter of the President or the Vice President or anybody in the administration trying to mislead anybody. Maybe the intelligence was not entirely accurate, but I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in conducting this debate, to try to do it from the higher plain, not from the suspicion that the President of the United States is trying to deliberately mislead the American people, but to acknowledge maybe there was something wrong with part of our intelligence and that is worth looking into.

That is precisely what the President has said he wants to have done because obviously he is just as concerned about this as anybody else is. It is for that reason he has asked for an investigation into the intelligence to find out whether it was correct, if it wasn't, why not, and what can we do about that in the future.

I urge my colleagues, in conducting this debate, let's do so from a higher plain than one in which we sow the seeds of politics and blame and suspicion, as has been done around here. We can conduct this debate on a much higher plain than that.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Mississippi.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I believe I have 5 minutes under the unanimous consent agreement.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

Mr. LOTT. I thank Senator Kyl and Senator Reid for making sure we have this time. I, too, think we need to sober up a little bit and look at the facts of what is involved.

First, it is an election year. Politics will come into play in everything we do. I don't mean that necessarily critically of us or either side. It is a fact. I suspect that it is having a hand in what we are seeing now.

Secondly, the fact is, we do have some problems with our intelligence community. It is not new. It didn't come up over the last 10 months or the last 10 years. It probably goes back to the mid-1970s when we had the Pike and the Church commissions that forced changes in the intelligence community from which we have never quite recovered. That is when we started getting away from human intelligence and relying on satellites and computers and technology. That is a big problem.

We can go back and point to things we didn't know or information we should have had back in the 1980s and 1990s that we didn't have. For us to take a look at our intelligence community and ask questions about why they have not done some things or they have gotten some things wrong is perfectly legitimate. The most important question should be, what are we going to do about it? Instead of pointing the finger of blame, trying to put some scalp on the wall and say: We nailed somebody because this information may not have been completely accurate, we should ask: What did we know? Did we need to know more? Were there inaccuracies? If so, what were they, and what are we going to do about it? Do we need to completely reconstruct our intelligence community?

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Do we need to make some changes at the head of some of these agencies? I don't know yet. But that should be our approach because we are going to need our intelligence community. We need it this very day.
Senator Kyl was making the point. Our troops are in the field today all over the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are working with the intelligence community today to try to make sure they know what is going on and what is happening, what the threats are. We don't want to undermine them. At the same time, if we are going to make improvements or changes, the sooner we can do it, the better.

The other thing is, what did we know. It is almost as if there were no weapons of mass destruction. We knew they had weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological. They tried to get nuclear capability. We know they killed their own people. They used chemical weapons on the Iranians. I was talking to a constituent this morning who was in Bazra back in the early 1990s, who talked about how simple it was to produce chlorine gas. Yet if you looked at the plant, you could be told, this is just a plastics plant. But it is very simple to make chlorine gas. It is very toxic, and that was what was used, I believe, against the Iranians. So we know they had these weapons of mass destruction.

Did they dismantle them, destroy them? Where did they destroy them? Why did Saddam Hussein give out bad information? Was he being lied to? Yes. Was he lying to the world community? Yes. There are all kinds of problems or questions such as that.

Did they move these weapons to Syria, Iran? We know they had them. That is a fact. We still don't know exactly what happened to them, and that is a danger.

What are we going to do about it? Let's become a government of commissions. It is really easy. Pass it off to a commission--the base-closure procedure, the 9/11 investigation, Social Security, intelligence. Let the Congress just say: We know nothing; we see nothing; we hear nothing. Let's let somebody else do it.

By the way, I have watched these commissions. Just because you have Republicans and Democrats, are you going to call them independent? How about an independent commission set up by the President that might have people who weren't clearly Republican or Democrat? How about experts on intelligence, people who have been at the CIA and the FBI, people who are not identified in the political area? If you want a real independent commission, that might be the way to do it.

I have another question: Why don't we do our own work? What do we have the intelligence committee for? The more I am on there, the more I think maybe we should not have it the way it is presently constituted. We are not going to wait for the Senate Intelligence Committee to put out its report. We are not going to wait on the House, bipartisan, Select Intelligence Committee to put out its report. No, we are going to rush pellmell and create a commission before we even see the report.

I suspect the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to be more aggressive than a lot of people might think. I think we are going to ask a lot of legitimate questions. How about letting the Iraqi survey team, the group that is out there still looking, do their work. But, no, it is a political year. We are going to use this to question all kinds of people.

The President got information on which he relied. The Senate got information it relied on. If there was inaccurate information, we ought to find out why and determine what we are going to do about it. We need to back off a little bit because we are dealing with people's lives. How we act in the intelligence area is going to be very important in the next few months.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

Mr. CHAMBLISS. I thank the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Mississippi for including me in this time because this is the most critical issue, obviously, facing not just the administration but the American public today. It is an issue which has already been adequately addressed, but it is not a new issue.

The fact of failures within the intelligence community is not something newly discovered. We knew following 9/11 that there were deficiencies within our intelligence community that probably allowed September 11 to happen. What have we done since that time?

As the Senator from Mississippi said: It was time to step up to the plate after 9/11, fix the problems. That is what we did in a bipartisan way, and we have done that since that point in time.

Now we are moving into an election year, and we are seeing sniping for political reasons and not solving problems for the right reasons. The problem continues to be out there, the problem of deficiencies within the intelligence community. It is not new. It is the same problem. It is a little bit different area.

We, as Members of this body and as Members of the House of Representatives, have an obligation to the American people to find out what went wrong. But let's not politicize it. Let's figure out what was wrong. By the way, when you look at the deficiencies in our intelligence community and you try to point the finger at them, you can't stop there. If you are going to point it at our intelligence community, what about the French intelligence community that believed exactly the same thing as our intel community? What about the German community, the British community? Every intelligence agency in the world had the same information and the same facts that we had.

Our President was presented with the facts that every other head of state was presented, but it was the Americans who were the target of the bad guys around the world. It was the Americans who were the victims on September 11 and were the potential victims thereafter. Our President exercised good, sound judgment based upon the information that he had and based upon the information that every other head of state had.

We can talk about the fact that we ought not to politicize the commission but we have, in fact, politicized the issue. There is a major, fundamental difference in trying to say that intelligence was faulty and at the same time trying to intimate that this administration exercised misleading acts. That is something entirely different, and that is an issue that we can debate long and hard. But it is simply not a fact substantiated by any of the evidence. Whereas the fact that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction had been substantiated time and time again since 1992, as the Senator from Mississippi delineated. It has been substantiated by intelligence communities from every other country in the world up until the time the Iraqi conflict began. There was no misleading on the part of this administration based upon the facts with which they were presented.

Let me address one item in particular that the Senator from Illinois stated. He and I both serve on the Intelligence Committee. This issue relative to the UAVs and the possible--I emphasize ``possible''--use by Saddam Hussein of UAVs to distribute biological weapons being an issue:

He knows good and well that we received information that indicated it was a possibility. We don't know for sure that was their intention, but we know good and well that it was a possibility.

So we could go down the line item by item with each of the statements that have been made. I will go back and conclude with what the Senator from Mississippi said. We can argue and take 10 minutes on each side to discuss this, but what the American people expect is leadership. What this administration is exhibiting is leadership. This body ought to do the same. We ought to exercise leadership to the American people because that is what we were sent here to do. We could come together and say we know what happened; now let's find the answer; let's figure out what the solution is to the problem at hand within our intelligence community in a bipartisan way, and nobody disputes that is the way we ought to act.

I say what we need to do is quit debating the issue and move forward now with finding out what the problem was, and let's do what is in the best interest of the American people, and that is continue to work hard to make America a safe place.

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I yield the floor.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I will respond to my colleague from Illinois. First, regarding the budget deficit, and comments made earlier regarding intelligence issues, I will find it interesting to see whether those who are so concerned about the Federal budget deficit will back up their words with actions by voting against runaway spending.

Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve, says the biggest problem is that Congress cannot restrain its bad spending habits. So for colleagues such as the Senator from Illinois--will they vote against the $30 billion in subsidies in the energy bill? Will they vote against twice that much in unpaid for highway funding--that is to say, unpaid for in the highway trust fund? It will be interesting to see how those who complain about the deficits actually vote when it comes to adding to the deficit.

Remember that last year, when we had a whole series of votes, when the Republican majority finally got a budget passed, we had to defeat a whole series of amendments by our Democratic colleagues--we usually got 51 or 52 votes--because almost all of the members of the Democratic Caucus voted in favor of spending more money in these amendments. We defeated something like $88 billion in spending amendments offered by our Democratic colleagues. Thank goodness we did. That amounted to over a trillion dollars in savings over the 10-year period of the budget.

So for my Democratic colleagues to complain about spending and budget deficits and then go on and vote for the projects that they can brag about back home, I think that at least is--shall we call it a dichotomy, in any event.

What about this business of tax cuts for the wealthy? Actually, I have some statistics here which I think are interesting. It shows that the reduction of the tax rate, the top marginal rate--these are the ``wealthy'' that our Democratic colleague spoke about--actually, mostly helps small businessowners, the very people who create the bulk of the jobs in this country.

You cannot have it both ways, my friends. You cannot complain on the one hand that we are cutting taxes for the people who create the jobs and then complain we are not doing anything to create jobs. That is just exactly what the tax rate reductions on the highest marginal rate accomplished. About 78 percent of that savings went to small businessowners. These are the people who pay at the top individual rate. They are subchapter S corporations or partnerships; we call them flowthrough entities, which pay at the top individual tax rate. They are small business employers. Sixty-two percent of the income tax filers in the top bracket are small businessowners, and 98 percent of the companies are small businesses.

According to the Small Business Administration, 75 percent of all of the new jobs are created by small businesses, which would suggest that small businesses created over 2 million of the 2.8 million jobs added since the start of 2002. How were these small businesses able to create those jobs? They had the capital to invest to do so. How did they get the capital? We cut their marginal income tax rates. Again, they received, by far and away, over three-fourths of all the relief that went to the top filers, the small businessowners, by cutting that rate.

Tax cut for the rich? No. It was for the small businessowners to create the jobs that have gotten our economy moving again.

Let's recall who actually pays the taxes in this country. These are Internal Revenue figures, I might add. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pays over a third of all of the taxes. One-third of all the taxes are paid by 1 percent of our population. The top 5 percent of the taxpayers pay over half, 53.4 percent. So just the top 5 out of 100 are paying more than half of all the income taxes in the country. The top 10 percent pay about 65 percent--in other words, almost two-thirds.

How much does the top 50 percent pay? Ninety-six percent. In other words, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers in this country pay less than 4 percent of the taxes. So divide the taxpayers in this country into two parts. One of our Democratic colleagues running for President is fond of saying there are two Americas out there: the wealthy and not so wealthy.

Let's take the top 50 percent and the bottom 50 percent. The top 50 percent is paying 96 percent of the taxes, and the bottom 50 percent is paying less than 4 percent of the taxes. Naturally, if we are going to give a tax cut to taxpayers, you are going to be cutting the taxes of those who are paying most of the taxes. But I wouldn't call these people all rich.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the categories, the top 50 percent makes $28,528. I wouldn't call that rich. How about the top 25 percent? We ought to be getting into the rich category here: $56,000 income a year. Raising a family of four, that is not exactly a big income these days. You can get by on it, but I wouldn't call those people wealthy or ``the rich.''

I think we have to be a little bit careful. And I know my colleagues wouldn't do this, but there are those outside this Chamber who would demagog this issue saying it is all about dividing America between the wealthy and the deserving, the so-called middle class.

We appreciate the fact that America is made up of every stripe of folks, and they all contribute in one way or another, but when it comes to creating jobs, it turns out if you reduce the highest marginal rate, which is what we did, what we have done is to reduce the rate for small businesses which have created the jobs that have gotten the economy going again. That is the effect of the tax relief that was recommended by President Bush and this Congress approved.

I suggest we give a little credit to the President for helping to stimulate the economy, create jobs, provide economic growth that is unparalleled. We had over 8 percent growth in the third quarter last year, and 4 percent in the last quarter. The stock market is doing very well.

It seems to me the message ought to be one of hope; that we have turned this recession around; that we have reduced taxes. As a result, we are creating jobs and actually things are looking pretty good.

If our Democratic colleagues would like to help us keep a lid on spending, then stop voting for every amendment that spends more money. It is pretty much that simple, Mr. President.

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Mr. KYL. Could we have regular order?

Mr. KENNEDY. Regular order. I believe I have the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may yield for a question but not for a statement.

Mr. KENNEDY. I am making the predicate. If the Senator from Arizona is not pleased with it, that is his problem.

WOW .. What's Unlce Teddy's problem .. someone forget to bring his morning cup of booze?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate immediately proceed to a resolution at the desk regarding emergency authority; provided, further, that the resolution be agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The resolution (S. Res. 296) was agreed to, as follows:

S. Res. 296

Resolved, That the Presiding Officer of the Senate may suspend any proceeding of the Senate, including a roll call vote or a quorum call, and declare a recess or adjournment of the Senate subject to existing authorities or subject to the call of the Chair, within the limits of article I, section 5, clause 4, of the Constitution, whenever the Presiding Officer has been notified of an imminent threat.

SEC. 2. When the Senate is out of session, the Majority and Minority Leaders, or their designees, may, acting jointly and within the limits of article I, section 5, clause 4, of the Constitution, modify any order for the time or place of the convening of the Senate when, in their opinion, such action is warranted by intervening circumstances.

Yeah, Kennedy ask Daschle to yield for a question then went into a rant(surprise surprise). That's why Kyl call for order, Kennedy needed to ask a question.

Senate Floor Calendar for Thursday, February 5, 2004

The Senate will convene at 9:00am for a period of morning business until 10:30am, with the first twenty-two minutes in control of Sen. Roberts or his designee, the following twenty-two minutes under control of Sen. Graham of Florida or his designee, the folowing twenty-two minutes under control of the Majority Leader or his designee and the final twenty-two minutes under the control of Sen. Feinstein or her designee. Following morning business, the Senate will resume conisderation of S. 1072, the Highway bill. The Senate will proceed with additional amendments to the Highway bill. The Senate should expect roll call votes during today's session.

TODAY @ 7:30AM on C-span2

National Prayer Breakfast National Prayer Breakfast, Washington Hilton Hotel White House Travel, DC Event

Lewis, John, U.S. Representative, D-GA Inhofe, James M., U.S. Senator, R-OK Watts, J.C., U.S. Representative, R-OK Gibbs, Joe, Head Coach, Washington Redskins Nelson, Bill, U.S. Senator, D-FL Bush, George W., President, United States Paris, Twila, Singer Abizaid, John, Commander, U.S. Central Command

09:00 am C-span1 LIVE 0:20 (est.) Call-In Democratic Legislative Agenda C-SPAN, Washington Journal Thomas A. Daschle , D-SD

And George Tenat is speaking sometime today. To Adress attacks on the CIA intel by the dems

Freepmail me if you want on/off this ping list.

That's strange C-span2 will be taping the prayer brakefast and re-play it later.

Tenat will be on C1 @ 9:30

HA!

A caller on C-span just went into the "you give republicans more time"

The host cut him off and went off. "That just not true and I'm tired of people saying it, it's just CRAP."

Yeah I caught that as I woke up. LOL!

Steve knows that if anything they let way too many leftists lie their way on the wrong line.
Dashole up at 9:00 EST.

Dashole up at 9:00 EST.

What is he doing on the floor talking about mental illness? Didn't I hear that he was going to be on Washington Journal? Or was I still half asleep?

Hummm, I don't know why hes on the Floor.

It must have been hard for Dashole to pass up being on open phones.

Although I bet he didn't want to take any callers questions.

Now they have him scheduled for 10 min. starting at 9:20, followed by George Tenet. Maybe he knows his talking points were going to be rebutted? Call me cynical.

The "Welstone Bill"??

He said 68 Senators have signed on, so unless it's a done deal, the House must be holding it up. I hope so, the little I heard sounded like another brick in the HillaryCare wall.

another brick in the HillaryCare wall.

Bob Graham now ranting about the FBI messing up and not stopping 9/11.

George Tenet speech Live thread