Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am pleased to rise today to introduce this important legislation, The Fairness in Representation Act, with my colleagues Senators Enzi and Bunning. Next year's decennial census will be an enormous and expensive effort to complete the constitutionally mandated ``actual enumeration.'' I am proud of our Census department and the many people around the nation that will work together to produce what we hope and expect will be a fair and accurate census. Unfortunately, current 2010 Census questionnaires lack a critical question: Are you a U.S citizen? How are we to accurately apportion representation in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College when no count of legal residents exists? Article 1 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution mandates that a census be taken every 10 years expressly for the purpose of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. However apportionment is based on each State's total population--including illegal aliens--relative to the rest of the country. Currently our census doesn't give us a count of the legal residents of this country. In the 1964 Supreme Court ruling, Wesberry v. Sanders the Court states that ``The House of Representatives, the [Constitutional] Convention agreed, was to represent the people as individuals and on a basis of complete equality for each voter.'' By counting citizens, legal residents and illegals alike, we are in effect eroding the power of the vote of those citizens who live in areas with fewer non-citizens. The large number of non-citizens in a district erases the principle of ``one man, one vote'' because it takes fewer votes to be elected to Congress. The political costs of this broken system are great. I have drafted this legislation to require the decennial census to include a question regarding citizenship. The legislation will further direct the census to make such adjustments in the total population figures as may be necessary, in order that those who are not U.S. citizens or are not lawfully present in the U.S. are not counted in tabulating population for the purposes of apportionment. Apportionment of congressional seats and the Electoral College will be based on the legal population, rather than unfairly advantaging those communities with high illegal populations. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation that will correct an inexcusable error and return our representation system to its constitutional roots.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the Senate Employees' Child Care Center for 25 years of service. The Senate Employees' Child Care Center opened its doors on February 27, 1984, as the first childcare center on Capitol Hill. Its successful opening is attributed to the dedication and hard work of Senate Members, employees, and their families. The center has grown, much like the children and Senate families it has served. On opening day, the center had 27 children enrolled from the ages of 18 months to 5 years. By comparison, the center today has grown to a full enrollment of 68 children from the ages of 10 weeks to 5 years. The center first opened in what was known as the Immigration Building and is now the Capitol Police headquarters. As it outgrew that space, a new facility was constructed nearby. Enrollment and growth continued, necessitating the construction of a new facility in December of 1999. While many things have changed over the past 25 years, such as the location, number of children served, and the faces of teachers and families, one constant is this: the Senate Employees' Child Care Center remains a first-class facility. Families continue to appreciate the comfort of knowing their children are in a safe and enriching educational environment. In fact, many families refer to the Center as a ``school'' rather than a daycare facility. We and our staffs strive for excellence. The Senate Employees' Child Care Center does the same. In 1989, it became the first center in Washington, DC, to achieve accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, NAEYC. This accreditation is the ``gold standard'' for early childhood education, and the center has maintained it continuously since 1989. As in the early days, families with children enrolled in the center are encouraged to be involved in its daily operations. Many families spend their lunch hours doing ``nap duty,'' others serve on the Board of Directors, and others assist with special classroom projects. Parental involvement fosters a cooperative environment and further contributes to the center's excellence. The greatest asset of the Senate Employees' Child Care Center is its teachers. One of the original teachers, Phyllis Green, continues to provide lessons that will serve children well throughout their lives. She is one of many dedicated professionals who connect with both children and parents in very special ways. I offer my congratulations to the Senate Employees' Child Care Center on achieving this milestone and best wishes for many more years of service.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Chairman, I worked to develop this initiative to incorporate a capability that the Department has failed to cultivate, yet offers tremendous potential to develop our domestic fossil energy potential. The University of Utah's Simulation and Computing Institute which has worked with both the Office of Science and NNSA computing programs is a leading computing program with tremendous potential to contribute to this effort. This outstanding computing capability is coupled with the vast oil and gas production capabilities at the 25 year-old Energy and Geoscience Institute. This organization operates on seven continents and shares research and technology with its 66 corporate members that all have energy production experience. The goal of this program will be to facilitate the development of unconventional fossil energy resources utilizing state of the art computing simulation and modeling capabilities.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have listened with interest to my friend from Oregon outline his relentless determination to get a solution to this problem, and I pay tribute to him for his willingness to do that. I am happy to follow his leadership, as we do our best to support what has been known colloquially around the country as the Wyden-Bennett bill, although in Utah we refer to it as the Bennett- Wyden bill. We have heard a lot of debate during the time when we should have been dealing with energy and water. Senator after Senator comes down and asks for permission to speak as in morning business, and they always speak about health care. Since we haven't anybody else to speak about the bill on the floor, Chairman Dorgan has indulged them in that bit of morning business. The one thread that has run through much of the statements about health care has been that we must get rid of the present system, as if that were a debatable issue. Everybody recognizes we must get rid of the present system. The proposal Senator Wyden and I have been behind gets rid of the present system. And coming to the floor and giving example after example of how the present system has failed Americans is not the same as putting forward a legitimate proposal as to how to deal with the present system. We discussed that a little yesterday, so I will not go into it again. I wish to make one slight addition to the comments Senator Wyden made with respect to choice. When I first got here, and the First Lady of the United States, Hillary Clinton, was proposing a health care program, one of the mantras we heard on the street from people who would demonstrate was: We want what Members of Congress have. We want the plan you have. And I said--half facetiously but half seriously--I want the plan I had before I came here. Because the plan I had was better than the one we got as Members of Congress. I point out the reason I wanted that plan is that I got to pick what that plan would be. How did I get to pick what that plan would be? I got to pick because I was the CEO of the company that made the choice. I was the only person in that company who got to pick, because once I made the decision that this is what we will have in the company, everybody else in the company was dependent upon my wisdom. Senator Wyden has pointed out we do have a wide range of choices in the plan that are available to us as Federal employees. I underscore, when I discuss this with people in Utah, that because I am a Senator, I have the same plan people at Hill Air Force Base have. This is the plan of all Federal employees. Yes, there are a number of choices and, yes, I am satisfied with it and I like it. But it is still true it is my employer--in this case the Federal Government--who designed the plan. I am glad it is a good plan. I don't think I would want to change it. I think I would take advantage of the promises that have been made in this debate; that if you like what you have, you can keep it. But the point is that someone who is an employer, who has not made that available, is frozen out of the opportunity for choice by virtue of the decision that the CEO of his company made. The one sure-fire question I can ask and know the answer I will get at every town meeting I hold on this is to say: How many of you--in the group gathered--either know somebody or are somebody trapped in a job he or she hates because they are afraid to lose their health care benefits? Every time I ask that question, hands go up all over the room. That is the kind of thing Senator Wyden and I are trying to change. These people are locked in a job they hate because they are afraid they will lose their health care. They are not allowed the choice of deciding what their health care dollars will be spent for. It is determined for them by their employer. If we go the direction in which Senator Wyden and I want to go, employers that continue to offer plans the employees like will find that their employees will exercise their right of choice to stay with that plan. But employers that say: No, we are going to cut corners a little and cut back on things, just because we think it would be better for our bottom line if we do this, will discover that if our legislation passes, their employees will be empowered to say we are taking our health care dollars and going someplace else and making another choice. That is the fundamental reason why we have been scored as having the bill that will turn the cost curve down rather than up. We change the present system in a way that will allow market forces to get into the mix and allow people to exercise their free choice and start to save money as a consequence; whereas, all the other plans that are being scored as turning the cost curve up do so because they eliminate any power of individuals in the marketplace to exercise their choice. I wish we were discussing energy and water. We seem to have turned this into a discussion of health care because the other folks will not come down. I won't intrude upon that any further. But having heard my colleague, I felt it appropriate for me to make these additional comments. With that I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I would ask the chairman, since cloture has been filed, doesn't there arise a time at which there is a cutoff by which amendments can be offered?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have just spoken with Senator Alexander. He is on his way over and is amenable to having a rapid vote. So he would come over and discuss with us the unanimous consent agreement with respect to time.

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I would associate myself with the chairman's remarks and simply add a few more figures. In the energy efficiency and renewable account, we reduced funding for program direction by $85 million, and program support funding was reduced by $48 million. In the Office of Science, we have cut funding for field offices by $13 million and cut headquarters funding by $6 million. And the President's request for the personnel and program direction account we cut by $160 million. So these are a little more granular than the overall figure the chairman mentioned. But I mention them to point out that we have indeed looked at each one of these individual items very carefully and produced the result the chairman described.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I say to both the chairman and the Senator from Oklahoma, if there is going to be a meeting to try to write this in the proper way, I want to be a part of it, because I agree absolutely with the effort the Senator is making. But the Senator from Oklahoma made one reference to efficiency. He said we want a bidding process that is efficient. I want to step out for a moment from the scientific debate into another circumstance that has to do with this bill, that has to do with my own State that I can give an exact example for. We have a cleanup program in southern Utah dealing with the cleanup of an old uranium plant. The tailings from that plant are right next to the Colorado River, and the fear is that the leaching from the tailings of that plant is going into the Colorado River, not only threatening the fish but the population downstream, downstream States, and the country of Mexico, and significant problems. All right. A contractor was necessary to clean up the tailings pile and there was competitive bidding that went on and the contractor was chosen and is now involved in a very significant, multimillion-dollar cleanup program. As I understand the language of the amendment of the Senator from Oklahoma, because we are appropriating more money for that cleanup program in this bill, we need another competitive bidding proceeding to see if that is the right contractor. This is a contractor who is looking at 10 years, 12 years for the contract, and every time a new appropriation is necessary in each bill. It would seem to me it makes sense that once we have picked the contractor through competitive bidding, there does not have to be a competitive bid every year to see whether another contractor can now move in, take over, and make this work. It is possible we could. It is possible that this first contractor might be running up costs in fashions he shouldn't be doing and there should be a review. But I agree with the Senator from North Dakota that this is too much of a broad brush in that kind of area. I was involved as a freshman Senator with respect to concessions at national parks, and I angered the ranking member of that committee when I sided with some other Senators in the majority--the Democrats at the time--to change the rules with respect to concessions in national parks because I said this is a rigged bidding situation where the incumbent contractor is always going to be taken care of. We finally got that done. I am completely in sympathy with what is trying to be done here, but I discovered in going through that process--the same general idea, different set of facts--that it is more difficult than it looks on the surface. That is why I am supporting the chairman in the amendment he is offering. But if there is going to be a discussion of how this gets more efficient in the pattern in which it is written, I want to be a part of that, because I am completely sympathetic to the effort of trying to see to it that we have open contracting wherever it makes sense.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have no objection to that request.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I support the amendment and hope we will now vote.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I will confirm that the amendments have been cleared, and I appreciate the cooperative way in which the two staffs have been diligently doing this. We are glad, after the long period of wait, that we finally are hurrying up. The old army line ``hurry up and wait,'' we have turned it around: Wait, and now we have hurried up. So I am delighted we are moving.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the chairman for his kind words and echo his comments about the staff and the hard work they have done. We are grateful to Doug Clapp and Barry Gaffney, Roger Cockrell, and Franz Wuerfmannsdobler, Brad Fuller, as well as Tyler Owens, Ben Hammond, the floor staff, and of course Scott O'Malia of the committee staff who has worked so hard with me. This has been a challenge for Scott and others because this is my first experience as the ranking member of this subcommittee. I was far more comfortable working on agricultural matters. But to have moved from the Agriculture Subcommittee to the Energy and Water Subcommittee has been a significant challenge and I am grateful to the chairman and the others for their willingness to work with me as I have come through this maiden experience. I agree with the chairman that this is a very important bill addressing one of the most significant challenges we face in this country, which is getting our energy policy right and getting the energy initiatives properly funded. I am grateful it has finally come to the point where we are in fact within moments of final passage. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I am in favor of the Voinovich amendment. To use the language of the cloakroom, it has not yet been hotlined. I do not know of any objection to it, and at least on this side, we will do what we can to get it hotlined, get it cleared, so it can be adopted, I would hope by voice vote, as quickly as possible. But because it has not been hotlined on our side, I would suspect the vote will probably take place this afternoon, if that is acceptable to the chairman. There has been, as Senator Voinovich has pointed out, a significant increase in the NRC workload, and GSA has been in negotiations with NRC to construct additional building space next to the existing NRC headquarters. The negotiations may extend beyond the end of this fiscal year, with the lease award occurring in 2010. So in order to anticipate that, the NRC and GSA agreed that the language should be continued in the fiscal year 2010 appropriations for the NRC. That will facilitate the procurement process and protect the government from any protests after a contract is awarded. This would mean the NRC could continue the current procurement without interruption. For those reasons, I think we should facilitate this. With that, Madam President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I will withhold the suggestion of an absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I know we are on the bill. As the manager on the Republican side, I want to stay on the bill, but, my colleague from Oregon having raised the issue with respect to the consumer choice and our proposal, I ask unanimous consent that I can proceed as in morning business in order to respond.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I am grateful to Senator Wyden for the leadership he showed here and the tenacity with which he has pursued all of these issues. As I have sat here and listened to the various interventions in morning business about health care, I found the common theme that I want to comment on with respect to it. I think Senator Wyden's comments helped me frame this theme. The theme I have heard over and over again from speakers has been: We can't stay where we are. And then the argument has been framed: We either have to move ahead with the President's program or stay where we are. As Senator Wyden has indicated, there are other alternatives besides moving ahead with the President's program and staying where we are. I would like to draw this analogy that I hope will help us understand at least this Republican's position. I won't try to speak for all members of my party, although I think many of them would be sympathetic with what I am about to say. Let's assume your neighbor's house is on fire. This is a serious problem. Your neighbor comes to you and says: My house is on fire. Lend me your garden hose so I can put the fire out. And you say: My garden hose isn't long enough to reach the fire. You don't understand, your neighbor says, my house is on fire. There are children in the house. There are women in the house. They will die if you don't put out the fire. Lend me your garden hose. I respond or you respond: I understand there are children in the house. I understand allowing the house to burn down is a tremendous mistake. But my garden hose won't reach. We need a different garden hose if we are going to put out the fire. No, no, no, the fire is reaching now, it is down, it has destroyed the top stories, it is getting down to the bottom stories; people are fleeing. Give me your garden hose or you are a terrible person. And you respond: I will be happy to give you a garden hose that would work, but the garden hose I have right now will not solve your problem. We need that kind of an understanding here. I am not a Republican who says: I defend the present system. I listened to the speeches being made about how terrible the present system may be, and I say I agree with them absolutely. I listened to the letters being read from home States that say: I was denied coverage by an insurance company bureaucrat. I lost my job and I lost my coverage. These are tragic, and I agree they are tragic, and I agree something ought to be done about it. It is just that, in my opinion, the President's garden hose will not reach. In my opinion, the President's garden hose will not only not put out the fire but, to stretch the analogy beyond all credulity, will make it worse. We heard about people who are being denied coverage under the present system. People will be denied coverage under the President's system. If we look at other countries that have adopted similar public plans of the kinds we are talking about, we are going to see people whose coverage is denied again and again. Indeed, the comment was made about Senator Kennedy and the brave battle he is putting on against his problem. If he lived under the single-payer coverage of other countries, he would be denied coverage because of his age. We don't want that in America. We don't want people like that to be denied opportunities. Senator Wyden and I have worked as hard as we can--back to the analogy--to create a garden hose that will reach, to create a garden hose that will, in fact, put out the fire, solve the problems, and change the present system. I thank the Senator from Oregon for making it clear that there are alternatives to the present system that are not necessarily the bills that are coming out of the two committees. I am not going to embarrass my friend from Oregon by insisting that he take the same position I take with respect to the bills that are coming out of the two committees, but together we have formed a solution that we think will solve the problem, we think will put out the fire, we think will turn down the cost curve. And we have now a growing chorus of voices of people who are saying: You know, Wyden- Bennett looks as if it will work; why don't we try it. The only question I am asking here is, Why don't we try it? So far, neither committee has been willing to look at the details of what we are talking about. All we are asking is that they do so because we are convinced that when they do, they will come to the conclusion that our garden hose will, in fact, put out the fire and it will do it more cheaply and more efficiently than the proposals that are before us. Again, Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for his leadership and his tenacity in going forward with this proposal. I am honored to be associated with him in this effort. I agree with all of the speeches that have been made that the present system is not acceptable. I hope we can get together and solve the problem in a truly effective and bipartisan fashion. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT. Senator Dorgan is temporarily away.

Mr. BENNETT. I am sure there will be a sufficient second when Senator Dorgan has returned.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the statement by Senator McCain. I rise with some responses to the comments he has made, which I hope will clarify the situation. Senator McCain, the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, serves with great distinction and has helped manage that bill on the floor. In the Defense authorization bill, which he helped manage, there are specific authorizations for every defense program, and there is a Defense authorization bill that passes every year. If, indeed, we had a similar situation with respect to those items under the jurisdiction of this appropriations bill, I would be more supportive of the position Senator McCain has taken with respect to the provisions of the bill. However, this is not a defense bill and not every department authorizes, each and every year, the same way the Department of Defense does. Indeed, this is not the way Congress intended the Department of Energy to operate. When the Department of Energy was organized in 1977, making it one of the more recent departments, its organic statute provided broad authorities to support a diverse research and development mission with the goal of energy independence. This is not a project-based account and, therefore, it doesn't receive annual authorization. Recently, there has been more attention on energy, which has resulted in two Energy bills in the past 4 years. But you need to go back 13 years, before the 2005 bill, to find another Energy bill passed by Congress. Obviously, the organic statute creating the Department anticipated that there would be an organic authorization for these items, and they would be handled in the appropriations bills. If we passed Senator McCain's amendment, it would eliminate any discretion of this subcommittee or of the Congress itself, for that matter, to make changes in the Department of Energy's budget priorities for spending plans. The Appropriations Committee would, therefore, become a rubberstamp for the administration's budget. Since we do not pass something like the Defense authorization bill, and there is no corresponding authorization bill for the Department of Energy, we would simply take the President's proposal and pass the money to support it, and I do not believe that is acceptable. Senator McCain ran through a list of projects for which he had little or no patience because he said he did not understand them, and they struck him as being projects that possibly had questionable merit. I have a list of projects that were funded by the administration out of the blanket authority the Congress gave the Secretary in what we call the Stimulus Act. We passed the Stimulus Act without any specific earmarks. We simply said: Here is your money and you get to decide how it is spent. Congress will not intervene. I voted against the stimulus bill for a variety of reasons, but we now have the announcements from Secretary Chu as to the specifics of the wind program funding awards. To quote Senator McCain in his comments about the earmarks in this bill: ``It may be that every one of these projects is legitimate and every one of them has merit.'' But this is the way the administration hands out money compared to the way the Congress hands out money. The Mountain Institute, Inc., in Morgantown, WV, overcoming barriers to wind development in Appalachian coal country, $99,000; the West Virginia Division of Energy, in Charleston, WV, overcoming the challenges in West Virginia, $100,000; in Austin, TX, $118,000 to fund solutions for wind developers and bats; for the board of trustees of the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL, studying ``are flying wildlife attracted to, or do they avoid wind turbines?''; Kansas City University in Manhattan, KS, the environmental impact of wind power development on population biology on greater prairie chickens; Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX, an assessment of lesser prairie chicken population distribution in relation to potential wind energy development; Western Ecosystems Technology, Inc., in Cheyenne, WY, $100,000 to study greater sage and sage grass telemetry for the Simpson Range Resource area; finally, in Kalamazoo, MI, the Western Michigan University receives $99,933 to study genetic approaches to understanding the population level impact of wind energy development on migratory bats. These, as I say, may all be very worthwhile items. I don't think they are any more worthwhile items than the items we put in our bill. I say to those in support of the McCain amendment, if the McCain amendment passes, you take away from the Congress the right to determine how this money is spent and you turn it over to the President entirely and let him or his administration decide. It does not mean the money will be saved; it simply means the money will be spent in the way the administration wants it rather than in the way Members of Congress want it. The last time I read the Constitution, article I of the Constitution gives the power of the purse to the Congress and says Congress shall determine how much money shall be raised and how much money shall be spent, and that is what the Congress has done. It has given an organic statute to the Department of Energy, and then it allows the Congress, under that statute, to come up with the specifics of how the money is spent. The Senator talked about report language not being binding in the bill. The bill, by legislative language, incorporates the specific projects in the report by reference. Therefore, it does become binding. If we pass the amendment Senator McCain has proposed, it would have a devastating impact on the Department's environmental cleanup requirements. These are cleanup programs that receive annual authorization for cleaning up sites and projects under the Defense Authorization Act. But it also has similar authorization on sites that are outside the Defense Department. Included in this nondefense category are ongoing cleanups in the following places--and I will repeat that again: ongoing cleanups. These are not new starts or projects that have come out of nowhere; these are items that are going forward, that have been authorized by past Congresses, under the organic statute of the Department of Energy: Paducah, KY; Portsmouth, OH; Moab, UT; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee; Idaho National Laboratory, in Idaho; Brookhaven National Laboratory, in West Valley, NY; Santa Susana, in California; Hanford, WA; Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois; Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. If I might focus on the one in Moab, UT, this is a cleanup of a uranium site, where there was a uranium plant during the boom times, when we were mining uranium as rapidly as we could, processing that, and we left behind tailings that have been judged as being damaging. These tailings are very close to the Colorado River. Indeed, the Senator's own State of Arizona is downstream from this tailing site. By appropriating this money in this bill in a manner that would be outlawed by the Senator's amendment, we are accelerating the cleanup process in this time of economic difficulty, adding more jobs, more activity, and, quite frankly, lower prices, as contractors are anxious to gain work and will bid lower than they would otherwise; it is the logical thing to do. It would be dropped from the bill if we proceeded with the Senator's amendment. For these reasons, I think the Senator's amendment would be a mistake. I urge my colleagues to vote it down. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the McCain amendment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that T.J. Kim of Senator Voinovich's staff be granted floor privileges for the duration of the Senate's consideration of H.R. 3183.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of my chairman, Senator Dorgan. Even more, I appreciate the hard work he has put in. The level of cooperation between the two of us and between our two staffs is as he has described it. This is a truly bipartisan effort, aimed at trying to solve the problems we face. One demonstration of the fact is that we have, in a bipartisan fashion, come in with a number significantly below that which the President requested. If it had been a single partisan effort, I am assuming it would have been responsive entirely to the President's request. As Senator Dorgan has indicated, we have a number of Member-directed items of spending. When people say: Well, where do you get the money for that? The answer is, we have canceled the President's directed orders of spending. I agree with Senator Dorgan that Members in these areas are closer to the people, closer to the problems, and understand them a little better than the folks downtown. I recommend passage of the bill to my colleagues. I am delighted with the prospect that it is highly likely this will be done prior to October 1, the start of the fiscal year. That is a goal that has not been achieved in decades and a further tribute to the leadership of Senator Dorgan that we are on that path. As I have said, the bill provides $643 million below the President's request. This is the number Senator Dorgan cited, the $34.271 billion, but it is $476 million above current year levels. One of the things we did that helps us come in below the President's request was focus on the fact that the stimulus package that passed earlier this year put a great deal of money into these accounts. We did not want to ignore the fact that they had that money from the stimulus bill in coming up with our own figures. The committee, as Senator Dorgan said, has said no new starts for the Corps of Engineers. I repeat that and reemphasize that because many of the complaints that I think we are going to get on the floor about Member-directed spending are for projects in the Corps of Engineers. They will say: Well, you are calling for earmarks. You use the dread word for this project and that project. Because we have no new starts, every project we are calling for is an ongoing project. So that if we were to cancel it, it would undoubtedly end up costing more money rather than would be saved if the earmark were to be struck down. For the Bureau of Reclamation, we are $55 million below fiscal 2009 levels. Pardon me. The request is $55 million below the fiscal 2009 level. The committee provides an additional $110 million to the Bureau. As Senator Dorgan has said, this is the tremendous backlog of underfunded projects. Let us take a sober lesson from what happens when we do not proceed with the proper maintenance in this area. In my own State of Utah, a privately owned irrigation canal broke and flooded the community of Logan, UT, and tragically, in the process, took the lives of two young children and their mother who were overwhelmed as a result. This is a reminder to us that we have a responsibility to keep this fund going because the human cost can be significant. These types of accidents are only avoidable if we are vigilant in maintaining the infrastructure and making the appropriate investments. With respect to the Department of Energy, the committee recommends $27.4 billion which is $1 billion below the President's request. Again, this is a demonstration of the fact that we are attempting to be good stewards, that we are paying attention to the fact that the Department of Energy was already the beneficiary of over $45 billion in supplemental and stimulus funding in fiscal 2009. Not all of that will be spent in this fiscal year, so that is a little bit of an overstatement of how much they will have to offset. But looking at the amount they had from the stimulus package, we felt we were appropriate in coming in $1 billion below the President's request. We do recommend an additional $100 million for Nuclear Power 2010 in order to complete this project. The bill restores $50 million funding for the Integrated University Program and Research and Reactor Facilities account to support nuclear engineering and research and training. That was eliminated in the budget request. I do that partly because I believe in it. I am joined with Senator Dorgan in doing it and also because, in my new assignment, I am taking the place of Senator Domenici, and he will come back and haunt us both if we are not appropriately supportive of nuclear power. His great work in that area is something I think we should carry on. There are other issues the Senator from North Dakota has already mentioned that I will not touch on as we go along because I do not want to be redundant. We do provide an increase in funding for the Office of Science, $127 million over the current year levels. I think that is essential to a sustained investment in important scientific facilities that we have throughout the country. Let's talk about cleanup. There are many Members of the Senate in States that support a strong environmental cleanup program, and the request reduced cleanup funding by over $200 million from current year levels. Well, we believe the faster we can move on cleanup, the cheaper it will be over the long term because contractors are out of work now. They are anxious to get back to work and they will make low bids and take advantage of that situation. We recommend $350 million in additional funding for both defense and nondefense cleanups. Again, there is such an activity going on in my State, and I know that moving ahead and having the funding available now will save us significant amounts long term. So funding has been added for cleanup activities at DOE facilities located in South Carolina, Idaho, Washington, New York, Illinois, Kentucky, New Mexico, and California. The committee has also restored critical funding in our national security sites, which was reduced in the President's budget request. An additional $83 million was added to the weapons account to invest in critical infrastructure and science facilities. We are attempting to highlight what I consider to be the failure of this administration to address fully spent nuclear fuel and defense waste inventory in this country. Consistent with the President's request, a minimum level of funding has been provided to sustain the NRC license review process of the Yucca Mountain Project. The Secretary of Energy has determined he will convene a blue ribbon panel of advisers to recommend other disposal options. But while the administration is considering these options, ratepayers across the country are required to pay $800 million annually to the nuclear waste fund to address spent fuel solutions. CBO estimates that by the end of the year the unspent balance in this trust fund will be $23.8 billion. The committee has included language directing the Secretary to conduct an evaluation of the sufficiency of the fund and suspend the annual collection from ratepayers until he has a strategy to address the issue of spent fuel inventory. Another problem that has arisen that we have dealt with has to do with the funding of pensions. We have provided the Secretary the authority to transfer funding within the Department to mitigate the impact to specific programs. The environmental cleanup mission has been hardest hit by pension shortfalls. The committee has not included any of the proposed budget gimmicks included in the request, and we have rejected a new tax on uranium fuel to pay for the cleanup. With that, I think I have covered the highlights. I am sure there is more the chairman will talk about. I will listen to what he has to say. If there is any pet project I think needs to be highlighted, I will rise to my feet again. But I wish to summarize that the committee has not included funding for new starts for either Members of this body or for the President. The funding is dedicated to the completion of ongoing projects. We have reduced the amount of Member-directed spending by 8 percent from previous years as we hear the complaint some people have with respect to that process. We have worked hard to rebalance the administration's request to ensure that investment in the water infrastructure is sufficient. We recognize that we could not accommodate all the needs across the country, so we focused our effort on ongoing projects and forgoing new starts. I believe this budget strikes an appropriate balance and I recommend its adoption.