Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me say to my friend from Nevada that his words are well-taken. His passion is understood. At least as far as I am concerned, his determination to get this bill through is fully shared. However, on behalf of the ranking member of the Banking Committee, Senator Gramm, and reserving his rights, as I am sure the Senator from Nevada has from time to time reserved the rights of some of his colleagues, I must object.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I will be more than happy, Mr. President, to turn the control of the time over to the Senator.

Mr. BENNETT. I realize the battle between the original creators of the patent and the generic drug companies has been going on ever since generic companies were formed, and that one group will always try to get the advantage over the other, and that a number of tactics are going on. I also realize the generic companies have been successful far more than many of the original companies would like, and to step in that battle and legislate that the generics will always win is fraught with all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of unintended consequences that Secretary Califano warned us against. The Senator from New Jersey wishes to ask a question.

Mr. BENNETT. I realize that. I am talking about loopholes.

Mr. BENNETT. Yes.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have enjoyed being here this morning and hearing the debate. When I came to the Senate, I was interested in health care, anxious to do what I could to improve health care in this country, and recognized rather quickly that one of the major things that has happened in this country is that technology has long since outstripped, overcome, and ignored legislation. I tell town meetings, among people who talk to me about Medicare, Medicare is the best Blue Cross Blue Shield fee-for-service indemnity plan that we could devise in the 1960s, frozen in time. Legislation does not allow flexibility; legislation freezes things. And we have a Medicare system that, frankly, makes little or no sense in the face of the way we practice medicine today. In the 1960s, when Blue Cross Blue Shield laid down their fee-for- indemnity plan, which Congress basically embraced and froze in legislation, prescription drugs didn't make much of an impact. The big financial challenge in those days was the cost of going to the hospital. So a plan was frozen in place that said, We will reimburse you for going to the hospital and, today, 40 years later, the way Medicare is structured doesn't make any sense. People take pills rather than having an operation, but the pills, even though they are many times cheaper than the operation, are not reimbursed, whereas the operation would be. There is a disincentive to practice intelligent medicine under Medicare. So to suggest that any rational individual looking at our present health care system does not support a prescription drug solution to our present dilemma is to misstate the facts. Everybody who looks at this, who has any understanding of the system, is in favor of a prescription drug benefit for Medicare. All right. We are all in favor. Let's do it. It is a little like someone having a medical condition back in the 1700s and turning to a physician and saying: We are all in favor of medical assistance, let's do it. And then the physician, acting on the conventional wisdom of the time, says: Bring in some more leeches, because that is the accepted technology. Unfortunately, that point of view would cause someone who had greater knowledge to say: Don't seek medical assistance under this circumstance. Do something different. Oh, no, we have to act quickly, and the prescribed method is to bring in some more leeches. So let's act quickly on this. The prescribed method is to simply attach a prescription drug benefit to the existing Medicare system and not pay much attention to any of the side effects. I was here in 1993 when we debated health care almost exclusively on this floor. It was the raging issue through the end of 1993 and through almost all of 1994. I was here when the effort to reform our health care system died on this floor. A lot of people think it was voted down. It was not voted down. It simply died of its own weight. George Mitchell, who was the majority leader at the time, despairing of the committee's not being able to produce a bill that might pass, took the whole process into his office and he produced, without any committee background, the Mitchell bill. I was part of the effort to defeat the Mitchell bill. We met twice a day in Senator Dole's conference room. We met under the leadership of the then-ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Packwood from Oregon, who understood this issue about as well as anybody, and we laid out the traps that we were setting for Senator Mitchell. Quite frankly, it was not very difficult. His bill was filled with so many problems and so many challenges that we didn't have to be very expert or very careful to be able to shoot it down. As we would raise one issue after another, Senator Mitchell finally withdrew the bill and simply let it die. It was never voted down. It died of its own weight. During that debate, Joe Califano--who served on the White House staff with Lyndon Johnson and was appointed Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and who some have called the father of Medicare--wrote an editorial. I would like to quote from the Washington Post of August 18, 1994. He was urging caution based on his experience. Here is the relevant paragraph: History teaches two lessons about Federal health care reform: It will cost more than any reasonable estimate at the time of enactment, and it will provoke a bevy of unintended consequences. The danger is that Congress may repeat history with a vengeance. Picking up on Secretary Califano's two points--it will cost more than any reasonable estimate at the time of enactment and it will provoke a bevy of unintended consequences--let's talk about cost. I have heard this morning that we can solve the problem of cost by--if I may quote a colleague--``closing a few loopholes.'' We can solve the problem of cost by telling the drug companies to hire fewer lawyers. We can solve the problem of cost by preventing the pharmaceutical industry from having 30 months more of control on the prices of their original drugs. For just 30 months more, they are somehow raising the price to the point that it is costing us so much money that we cannot afford this bill. And if we can just change that 30 months--just close that one little loophole--suddenly we will have enough money to pay for the whole thing.

Mr. BENNETT. I am often considered the Senator from Idaho. So that is fair.

Mr. BENNETT. I was not aware of that. If I may, reclaiming my time, make this comment about this whole circumstance, one of the reasons I was unaware of that is because I am not a member of any of the committees that deal with this. I often thought that since I was not a member of the committees, I would not have an opportunity to be involved in the details of the bills. But I have discovered in this circumstance that not being a member of the committee is not a barrier to being involved, because the committee is not writing this legislation. The committee has been dismissed. The members of the committee who have expertise, the committee staffs that have been working on this for the 5 years that the Senator from Massachusetts referred to, have been dismissed. Their expertise is being ignored. The majority leader has taken the bill into his office, and he has created his own bill, much like Senator Mitchell did back in 1994. I trust it will have the same effect. The Mitchell bill, however well- intentioned, hit the floor with all of the flaws in it that could have been worked had it had a proper committee process. I submit that this bill is hitting the floor with this process. It is hitting the floor with all of the same potential so that Senators, such as the Senator from New Hampshire, who has expertise in this area, have been frozen out. Senators in the Finance Committee who have tremendous expertise in this area have been frozen out. And the majority leader has taken this all to himself. That means all of us who have gaps in our knowledge are suddenly confronted with the responsibility of dealing with this issue without a committee report, dealing with this issue without the guidance of ranking minority concurrent opinions. We are just faced with this on the floor, and all of us, willy-nilly, have to do our best to do our homework. I apologize to the Senator from New Hampshire for not knowing the specific he raised, but I point out that this is to be expected under the circumstances with which we are presented in this bill. Mr. President, the phrase that is used over and over with respect to medicine goes all the way to the Hippocratic oath, which says: Do no harm. That is a more specific way of summarizing what Joe Califano warned us about in 1994, the unintended consequences and the cost. The Senator from Massachusetts used the figure $60 billion in savings. I would like to see the background for that figure. He said it has not been scored yet, but I am sure he has some basis for coming up with that figure, and I do not challenge it. I am being told that the bill he would prefer to have passed, which also has not been scored, will eventually cost $1 trillion over a 10-year period--$1 trillion. Somehow, $60 billion does not get us to $1 trillion. I cannot intuitively think that closing some loopholes in an area where there has been intense competition and litigation for years is somehow going to give us such dramatic savings that we can pay for this bill in a way that will not end up hurting the senior citizens and hurting the people at the bottom of our economic ladder. Let me make this one additional point because I see one of my colleagues here, the Senator from Pennsylvania, who would like to speak further. For those who say cost is important but health care is more important, that cost is important but compassion is the most important thing, and we should not let cost stand in the way of our helping our least fortunate citizens, that is an emotion with which I totally identify. That is a feeling that all of us can accept and agree with. But the fact--the cruel fact--is that if the economy is in trouble, if the Government is feeding inflation through tremendous deficits and soaring expenditures, the people who get hurt the most in those difficult economic times are the people at the bottom. Conversely, in the period we have just gone through when everything was soaring and doing well, someone asked Alan Greenspan: Who benefited the most from this boom?--thinking he would say it was the Donald Trumps and the Bill Gates of the world who benefited the most from the boom. He said: Without question, the evidence is overwhelming that the people who benefited the most from the sound economy were the people in the bottom quintile; that is, the people in the bottom fifth had the greatest benefit in terms of what happened to make their lives better. When we talk about costs, we are not being cold hearted. We are not being green-eyeshade accountants. We are recognizing there is an element of compassion that redounds to the benefit of the people at the bottom if we keep our finances under control, if we see to it that the Government is properly funded and properly financed, and we do not allow expenditures to run willy-nilly out of control. That is part of compassion. That is part of taking care of the least fortunate, and that is a debate we are having on this floor now that some would like to wave aside. I reserve the remainder of the time and yield to Senator Gregg, as he takes over the leadership spot, but yield to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. BENNETT. So I was correct in saying I did not understand the Senator's point.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure today to introduce for the Senate's consideration legislation that will benefit the school children of Utah and improve the management of the public lands within Utah. This legislation closely follows two previous legislated land exchanges, the ``Utah Schools and Lands Exchange Act of 1998'' and the ``Utah West Desert Land Exchange Act of 2000''. Each of these past exchanges has enabled the Federal Government to consolidate lands in Utah with significant resource value while the State of Utah has accumulated lands of lesser environmental significance, but with higher revenue generating potential. The Federal-Utah State Trust Lands Consolidation Act will only add to the successes earned through the last two land exchanges. The Utah Enabling Act of 1894 granted to the State four sections, each section approximately 640 acres in size, in each 36 square-mile township. These lands were granted for the support of the public schools, and thus are referred to a school trust lands. Accordingly, the School and Institutional trust Lands Administration, SITLA, is required by law to generate revenue in accordance with its mission from approximately 3.5 million acres of widely dispersed land. The location of these lands, as they are not contiguous to each other, has made management by the State difficult. In addition, as school trust lands are interspersed with Federal lands, Federal land designations, such as wilderness study areas, national monuments, and national parks, have further complicated the state's ability to fully carry out its trust responsibility to its public schools. The legislation I propose today will ratify an agreement signed by the State of Utah, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture. Under the agreement the Federal Government will receive 108, 284 acres from SITLA while the Federal government will transfer to SITLA approximately 133,000 acres of federal lands. SITLA will exchange property with significant resource values including inholdings in the Manti-La Sal National Forest, the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, and most importantly 102,000 acres in the San Rafael Swell. The San Rafael Swell is one of the most remarkable areas in the county. It is 900 square miles of rugged terrain sprinkled with amazing mesas, buttes, and canyons. The San Rafael Swell also contains significant natural, historical, and cultural resources and it is home to an important population of desert bighorn sheep. Furthermore, over the yeas the San Rafael Swell has been proposed to be designated as wilderness, a national conservation area, a heritage area, and a national monument. It is widely agreed that this area deserves special recognition. Because of the proposed designations and the overall importance of the San Rafael Swell, sizable school trust inholdings are not advisable; both the State and Federal Government would be better served by consolidated ownership. The majority of the lands acquired by the SITLA are in the Uinta Basin, which will compliment current SITLA holdings. These lands are less environmentally sensitive but have good potential for development in the future, thereby allowing the State to maintain its trust responsibilities. Additional properties will be acquired in Emery, Washington, Sevier, and Utah counties. During negotiations between the State of Utah and the Federal Government great care was taken to exclude from exchange Federal lands designated as wilderness study areas, areas proposed for wilderness designations in pending Federal legislation, significant endangered species habitat, significant archaeological resources, areas of critical environmental concern, or other lands known to raise significant environmental concerns of any kind. Additionally, the parties to this agreement expended substantial effort to ensure the value of the exchange was equal. To ensure the exchange was of comparable value the parties obtained the services of a nationally recognized real estate consultant who reviewed the methodologies and assumptions used to determine value. After completing a thorough review, the consultant supported the parties' conclusion that the exchange was of equal value. This legislation has the strong support of Utah's delegation, the Utah State Office of Education, and the Utah Parent Teacher Association. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation this year.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I came to the floor to make a speech and discovered that my leader is not here. But to protect leadership rights in this matter, I will object until leadership has an opportunity to review the request made by the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, on the same basis as before, reserving the right for my leadership to examine it, I object.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, it gives me great pleasure today to introduce for the Senate's consideration legislation that will benefit the school children of Utah and improve the management of the public lands within Utah. This legislation closely follows two previous legislated land exchanges, the ``Utah Schools and Lands Exchange Act of 1998'' and the ``Utah West Desert Land Exchange Act of 2000''. Each of these past exchanges has enabled the Federal Government to consolidate lands in Utah with significant resource value while the State of Utah has accumulated lands of lesser environmental significance, but with higher revenue generating potential. The Federal-Utah State Trust Lands Consolidation Act will only add to the successes earned through the last two land exchanges. The Utah Enabling Act of 1894 granted to the State four sections, each section approximately 640 acres in size, in each 36 square-mile township. These lands were granted for the support of the public schools, and thus are referred to a school trust lands. Accordingly, the School and Institutional trust Lands Administration, SITLA, is required by law to generate revenue in accordance with its mission from approximately 3.5 million acres of widely dispersed land. The location of these lands, as they are not contiguous to each other, has made management by the State difficult. In addition, as school trust lands are interspersed with Federal lands, Federal land designations, such as wilderness study areas, national monuments, and national parks, have further complicated the state's ability to fully carry out its trust responsibility to its public schools. The legislation I propose today will ratify an agreement signed by the State of Utah, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Agriculture. Under the agreement the Federal Government will receive 108, 284 acres from SITLA while the Federal government will transfer to SITLA approximately 133,000 acres of federal lands. SITLA will exchange property with significant resource values including inholdings in the Manti-La Sal National Forest, the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, and most importantly 102,000 acres in the San Rafael Swell. The San Rafael Swell is one of the most remarkable areas in the county. It is 900 square miles of rugged terrain sprinkled with amazing mesas, buttes, and canyons. The San Rafael Swell also contains significant natural, historical, and cultural resources and it is home to an important population of desert bighorn sheep. Furthermore, over the yeas the San Rafael Swell has been proposed to be designated as wilderness, a national conservation area, a heritage area, and a national monument. It is widely agreed that this area deserves special recognition. Because of the proposed designations and the overall importance of the San Rafael Swell, sizable school trust inholdings are not advisable; both the State and Federal Government would be better served by consolidated ownership. The majority of the lands acquired by the SITLA are in the Uinta Basin, which will compliment current SITLA holdings. These lands are less environmentally sensitive but have good potential for development in the future, thereby allowing the State to maintain its trust responsibilities. Additional properties will be acquired in Emery, Washington, Sevier, and Utah counties. During negotiations between the State of Utah and the Federal Government great care was taken to exclude from exchange Federal lands designated as wilderness study areas, areas proposed for wilderness designations in pending Federal legislation, significant endangered species habitat, significant archaeological resources, areas of critical environmental concern, or other lands known to raise significant environmental concerns of any kind. Additionally, the parties to this agreement expended substantial effort to ensure the value of the exchange was equal. To ensure the exchange was of comparable value the parties obtained the services of a nationally recognized real estate consultant who reviewed the methodologies and assumptions used to determine value. After completing a thorough review, the consultant supported the parties' conclusion that the exchange was of equal value. This legislation has the strong support of Utah's delegation, the Utah State Office of Education, and the Utah Parent Teacher Association. I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation this year.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BENNETT. Will the Senator agree that might have been part of the reason why companies, in an effort to attract and hold the best executive talent, would have moved away from traditional compensation, that the Senator and I both understood when we were growing up and applying for jobs, and into the more esoteric area of stock options because stock options were, in fact, not deductible; whereas, good old- fashioned pay for services rendered was given a tax disadvantage as a result of the Clinton tax bill?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have spent most of the afternoon in the Chamber listening to this debate, which I have found to be illuminating, occasionally informative. I want to do what I can to perhaps add to the information, if not to some of the light. I made reference, in my colloquy with the Senator from Delaware, to the decision that was made by the Congress back in 1993 to put a limit on the amount of compensation that executives could receive in terms of traditional dollar salary. And the limit was $1 million. I remember some of the rhetoric that flew around this floor at that time, filled this Chamber--how terrible it was that people were being paid these outlandish salaries and that somehow it would benefit the people at the bottom of our economic ladder if there was a limit placed on those salaries. And so recognizing that they could not outlaw the salaries, Congress could do the next best thing--or, if I might say, the next worst thing--and say: All right, they can pay themselves these big salaries, but, by George, we will not allow a tax deduction for anything over $1 million. Then, recognizing that would probably produce all kinds of difficulty, Congress said: Except in a number of areas. And one of the areas of exceptions was that nonsalary compensation could exceed $1 million and be expensed if it were approved by the shareholders. In my view, this was a strong incentive to move towards stock options. After all, if you are running a public company and your services are worth $5 million or $10 million on the open market, you are not going to stay with a company that will only pay you $1 million in cash if a competing company will come along and offer you the $5 million or $10 million you think you are worth in the form of other compensation. So as we get lyrical around here about how terrible stock options are, and how stock options lead to all kinds of excess, we should remember that Congress, in its excess of enthusiasm for a form of wage and price controls, helped contribute to this situation. We do not like to have institutional memory. We do not like to be held accountable for our actions 4 our 5 years after those actions are taken. But, in this case, I think it is appropriate for us to remember the past while we are getting so exercised about what it is we plan to do in the future. If I might, Mr. President, be a little autobiographical for a moment, I would like to trace my own experience with stock options. I have reflected on this, and I think it has perhaps some value in this debate. I was working for the JC Penney Company in the mid-1960s. I was interested, when I went to work for the Penney Company, to find out that company had a tremendously innovative and singular form of compensation; that is, no one in the company was paid more than $25,000 a year--no one. The president, the chairman of the board, none of the vice presidents--no one was paid more than $25,000 a year. There was a pool of profits that was created, and in addition to your $25,000 salary, you were given points in the pool. It was assumed that the pool was divided up in such a way that any one point in the pool was worth $1. So when I went to work for the Penney Company in 1964, my salary was, as I recall, $10,000 a year. I was not important enough to get to the exalted $25,000 a year stage. But I was given 2,500 points in the pool, which meant that if the company met its earnings objectives, I would get another $2,500; in other words, my real salary would be $12,500. So I did everything I could to make sure that every point in the pool was, in fact, worth $1. I did what I could to turn off the lights. I did what I could to save expenses. I did what I could to drive sales so that the company would meet its goal. My memory is that in one of those years each point was worth 93 cents; that is, the company fell 7 percent short of its projection. And every one of us in the company who was having that kind of a salary circumstance felt that 7 percent hit. In the example I have just given, instead of getting another $2,500 at the end of the year, I would have that $2,500 shaved by 7 percent. I would get my $10,000 salary, plus 93 percent of the additional $2,500. There were stories in the Penney Company that were legendary about managers who would get transferred from one Penney store to another. At the time, as I recall, the limit was not $25,000, it was $10,000. So $10,000 per year was the maximum anyone in the company was paid. A store manager who was transferred from a relatively small store to a relatively large one in a large city was sure he was going to get a big raise. He got his first check, and it was for $10,000 a year. And he said: But my expenses are higher. I am running a store that is two or three times bigger. It doesn't matter; you get $10,000 a year. At the end of the year, when they added up the profits of that store, he got a bonus based on the profits of the store he was managing, and the bonus was about $100,000. Well, he had an obvious incentive to see to it that store was profitable. What does any of this have to do with stock options? That system that was followed by the Penney Company that helped drive its growth all those years--where compensation was tied to performance, not only your personal performance as in the case of the store manager I described but in the company's performance, as in my own case--that program was scrapped. We went to a more traditional kind of compensation. As part of the traditional kind of compensation, we had stock options. I got a little comfortable with the old system because I remember 1 year where each point in the pool was worth $1.23. The company did much better than it had anticipated, and I got a 23 percent upward kick in my compensation. I questioned: Why are we getting away from this because it seems to me this works? The answer was: Wall Street requires it. Well, that wasn't enough of an answer for me. I said: What do you mean Wall Street requires it? They said: The analysts at Wall Street have said to us, until you give stock options, we are not going to believe that you are serious about the future of your company because stock options are not tied to immediate profits. Stock options are tied to future profits. And until you put some of your compensation to your executives and key employees in the form of stock options, we will not believe that you believe the future of your company is as bright as you say it is. We want them to have a stake in the future. So as it was explained to me, in the scrapping of this unique compensation plan that I think the JC Penney Company was the only company in the country, if not the world, that followed it, in the scrapping of that plan, you had to adopt some form of stock options. So they did adopt stock options. I didn't stay around long enough to take advantage of them. I entered the Nixon administration in 1969 and gave up my vesting in a number of circumstances at the Penney Company. Frankly, I was a little nervous about that because I thought I had a bright future financially if I had stayed at the Penney Company. And again, as I say, at the end of the year, when they sent me the money that had been accumulating in my behalf during the part of the year I worked there, each point was worth $1.23. That said to me, once again, how much more money I would have had if I had stayed with Penney instead of coming with the Government. That is a separate issue. I will not go down that road any further. I am glad I made the decision I made. I probably would not be a Senator if I had not. The point is, the compensation of employees should be tied to the future and benefit and prosperity of the company, and stock options were created with that in mind. What we have seen them become, since 1993, when they were not available as part of an intelligent compensation mix, but they were made more valuable by tax treatment by the Congress making an accounting decision, what we have seen is that stock options have accumulated the bad name we have been hearing about here on the floor. I am not sure I agree with everything that has been said about how terrible stock options are, but I do recognize they have led to some excesses. In the New York Times, on July 12, there was an editorial signed by Walter Cadette, senior scholar at the Levy Institute of Bard College and retired vice president of J.P. Morgan. With a background at J.P. Morgan, in my view, he has a little bit more credibility than some of the people who write editorials for the New York Times. But he made the same point that has been going around the floor here in some of the rhetoric when he says: Options . . . hold out the promise of wealth beyond imaging. All it takes is a set of books good enough to send a stock price soaring, if only for a while. If real earnings are not there, they can be manufactured--for long enough, in any case, for executives to cash out. This, in essence, is what happened at Enron, WorldCom, Xerox--indeed, at quite a long list of companies. That is not congruent with the explanation about stock options I received back in the 1960s, when I had my first opportunity to participate in stock options in a Fortune 500 company. That is something that is new, that has come along. So we are back to the fundamental question of this bill, which is, How do we account for the performance of a company in a way that will allow investors to make an intelligent judgment about the value of the company? That is the fundamental issue here. It is fundamental enough that I think I ought to repeat it: How do we account for the performance of the company in an accurate enough manner to allow investors to make an intelligent decision about the future of that company? Some will say to us: That is a very easy question to answer. Congressman Gephardt has been quoted in the press as suggesting that accounting is a science. It is a simple matter of black and white, of adding 1 and 1 and getting 2. That is not the case, however much we would like to believe that is the case. Yes, when you are talking about some aspects of accounting for a company's performance, it is a simple matter of adding up the numbers and reporting them. But in a company as complex as today's modern industrial corporation, there are a whole series of judgment calls that must be made. It is not just a matter of adding up all of the sales. It is not just a matter of adding up all of the costs. Back to my example of the JC Penney Company, this is a matter of a judgment call being made. What is the judgment of the value of this company if it does not trust its executives enough with stock options? Analysts on Wall Street who are trained and experienced came to one judgment call: that the Penney Company was not worth as much without stock options as it would be with them--nothing whatever to do with the bottom line, nothing whatever to do with how many socks we sold or how many shoes we sold or how many shirts we sold. It was a judgment call on the value of the company based on accounting decisions. Are we going to account for compensation strictly on the basis of the Penney Company's system or are we going to make a judgment call based on stock options? Well, the Penney Company did what it believed it had to do under those circumstances and, of course, went forward in its history. The point here is that there are judgment calls to be made every day in every circumstance with respect to accounting, and they will determine how the public, the investing public, will respond to the company that makes them. That raises the question of what should those calls be and who should determine what those calls should be. There is a term we use. It is called GAAP. It stands for generally accepted accounting principles. The very phrase itself defines what it is we are talking about. If we want to make an accounting decision as to what something is worth, we should make the decision within the parameters of GAAP; that is, we should make the decision on the basis that is generally accepted. Let me give an example of what happens when you go outside the basis of what is generally accepted accounting principles. I was involved with an investor and he put out appropriate balance sheets, accounting information, profit and loss statements, and so on. He got a very angry call from one of the subinvestors. This was the kind of man who would sell shares in his overall project primarily to doctors and dentists. He said to me once: I will not sell shares to lawyers. I said: Why not? Isn't a lawyer's money just as good as a doctor's or a dentist's money? He said: No, because lawyers are trained to find problems and I don't want sub-investors who spend all of their time looking for problems. Well, he got a phone call from a physician who said to him: I have looked at your financial information and you are lying to me. He said: What do you mean I am lying to you? He said: It is right here in your documents. You said this particular venture made X hundreds of thousands of dollars last year. Now you have given me your financial statements and I have found out you didn't make a penny. The man said: What are you talking about? He said: I have it right here. Here is a list of your assets and a list of your liabilities and they match each other to the exact cent. You didn't make any money. Well, generally accepted accounting principles say that a balance sheet always has to balance, that the number on one side and the number on the other side must equal each other to the penny. This man did not understand generally accepted accounting procedures, he wanted to keep books a different kind of way, and he was misled. The solution, of course, was to educate him on what those generally accepted accounting procedures ought to be. Once he generally accepted what those procedures were, he could read the profit and loss statement, the balance sheet, and he could discover that the man, in fact, was not lying to him and that, in fact, the venture had made several hundreds of thousands of dollars that year. Now, let's come to Wall Street, let's come to Enron, let's come to all of the things that we are talking about here. One of the things we have heard in many of the hearings that I have attended on this subject is that if you were a sophisticated analyst of financial statements, you could, in fact, find all of the information that you needed in the footnotes of the various financial statements that were published. You did not need the kinds of disclosure that this bill is calling for. Well, I examined that, listened to that testimony, listened to the people who made that point, and came to the conclusion that they are right. If you are sophisticated enough to be able to go through every single footnote, examine every single side comment, and plow through all of the boilerplate that makes up a standard financial release, you could create an accurate picture of that corporation--except in those cases where there was outright fraud. In my opinion, Enron was a case of outright fraud, not a case of hiding things in footnotes; it was a case of lying. Quite frankly, there is nothing we can do in this Chamber, or anywhere else in a legislative forum, to stop people who determine that they are going to lie, who are determined they are going to commit fraud. That will happen no matter what kind of a bill we pass. We can raise the penalty and thereby discourage it a little more--and there are proposals to do that--but we cannot stop it. If someone is determined he is going to break the law, and he thinks he can lie and get away with it, he will still do it regardless of the bills that we pass here. But what we can do, what we should do, and what this bill is crafted to do is to make it easier for the ordinary investor to understand what a company is worth, make it so that the generally accepted accounting principles conform with generally understood activities with respect to the business world. The question is, how can we establish accounting rules that will make it possible for the ordinary investor to understand what is going on and not restrict understanding to those who can read the footnotes, who can decipher all of the boilerplate. I don't think we will ever get there in a perfect world. Life being what it is, with the lawyers coming in and requiring careful terms of art to be spelled out, we will never get to the point where someone who does not have any kind of legal understanding of the terms of art can read this as easily as he or she could read Harry Potter. However, we can move in that direction, and I feel this bill does so move. The one thing that we should be most careful of, however, is to avoid having Congress set the accounting rules. Why? If Congress sets the accounting rules, it will--to use a phrase we use here derisively sometimes--take an act of Congress to turn that around. And having set the rules, Congress is very reluctant to come back in an act of Congress and change them. But if the rules are set by the regulatory bodies over which Congress exerts some oversight responsibility, they can be changed much more easily as more information comes along and as people begin to discover that what they did previously maybe doesn't make as much sense. I offer as exhibit A Congress's action to outlaw the deductibility of cash compensation above a million dollars--something that, in retrospect, now looks like it was a pretty stupid thing for us to have done. But we have done it, and the chances of trying to get a bill through that would undo it are very slim. If we stay out of the business--we in Congress--of making these kinds of accounting decisions, we will be better off, the economy will be better off, more people will keep their jobs, et cetera. Let me close on that particular subject with that particular idea in mind, and that is that Congress from time to time wants to step into the marketplace, repeal the law of supply and demand, and assert our judgment over the judgment of the marketplace. I have said many times, and will say many times hence, if I could add to what we have carved in marble around here, I would say: ``You cannot repeal the law of supply and demand.'' But we keep trying to do it with wage and price controls. We keep trying to repeal the law of supply and demand. We tried to do it in 1993 when we said we will do something about the excessive compensation of executives. We won't say that the marketplace and the law of supply and demand will determine what people get paid; we will legislate it. We will legislate it with tax policy. We will do some social engineering through tax policy. We keep trying to do that all the time, and it almost always produces a perverse effect. Let me address this question of overwhelmingly big salaries and compensation--as if there was something really evil about that, really corrupting about that. Maybe there is, in terms of the impact that that sort of compensation has in the lives of an individual, but it is the marketplace at work. Let me give an example with which I think everybody might be familiar. I am not talking about Jack Welch, the CEO of GE. I am not talking about Ken Lay at Enron. Let's talk about somebody with whom most people can identify. Let's talk about Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky has been called, accurately in my view, the greatest hockey player who ever lived. Along with that, Wayne Gretzky is the highest paid hockey player who ever lived. At the time the decision was made by the hockey team that brought Wayne Gretzky into the United States and paid him an incredible sum of money, there was a great hue and cry: How can one individual be worth this much money? For what? Knocking a solid piece of whatever hockey pucks are made out of around on the ice, for that he is worth $20 million, $30 million, $50 million--whatever it was--a year? The owner of the team came out of some obscurity long enough to say: Yes, he is worth that much money, and let me explain to you why. Then he outlined what the ticket sales for his team were the year before he hired Wayne Gretzky and what the ticket sales for his team were the year he announced the hiring of Wayne Gretzky. The number was several times the total amount that Wayne Gretzky was being paid. The owner said: On a percentage basis, he is a bargain. He is a steal at the price I got him. These numbers are representative rather than absolute, but they stick in my memory that they were paying Gretzky something like $40 million or $50 million and the increase in ticket sales was going to be something like $120 million to $150 million. The owner said: If I had to, I would pay him twice as much because I am getting the benefit. People say: But that is measurable. Michael Jordan did the same thing for the Washington Wizards. We can figure that out with accounting. But what these chief executive officers are being paid is obscene. If you are a shareholder of General Electric, Mr. President, and you looked at what Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, did with that company during the time he had it in his stewardship, would you look back on that total period and say we paid Jack Welch too much money? Or would you look back on the amount of the value of General Electric that was generated under his stewardship and say he was a bargain; he was a steal; we could have paid him twice what we paid him and still come out well ahead? You say: But look at all of the executives who flew their companies right into the sea. Look at the executives who destroyed their firms. Yet they got this same amount of money. If I may go back again to the sports world, have we not seen sports teams pay very large salaries, responding to the law of supply and demand, for coaches who had losing seasons? For quarterbacks who ended up being on the waiver list? Those of us in the Washington, DC, area have had a lot of experience with quarterbacks. Does that mean we are going to stop trying to get the right quarterback for the Washington Redskins by saying we will pay them average salaries in the National Football League so that there will not be any more of these obscene salaries and failures? Several things will happen if the Washington Redskins take that point of view. No. 1, they will start to lose even more than they have lost in the past. And, No. 2, the fans will stop coming and the savings that you will make in buying a quarterback that you can get for $400,000 or $500,000 a year, compared to the one that you are gambling $10 million or $20 million on will all disappear as the ticket sales fall off, the television revenue disappears, and people do not want to come anymore. Yes, there have been corporate executives who have been vastly overpaid. There have been CEOs who have been hired on the basis of their reputation, just as football coaches who have been hired on the basis of their reputation, who, to lure them into the company, have been given great packages and then failed to deliver. But there are also the Jack Welches of this world who have turned out to be bargains no matter how much they were paid. Who should make the decision as to how much they should be paid? The answer is, The marketplace should do it. The law of supply and demand should do it. Someone who has demonstrated that he or she has the capacity to build, maintain, and expand a corporation with tremendous value for the shareholders is someone who can demand very high salaries because he or she is in very short supply. We can complain all we want to about the social inequity of a CEO who is earning $20 million, $30 million, $40 million a year and someone who is working in that company for minimum wage, but it is the same principle as saying: Look at the difference between Wayne Gretzky down on the ice earning $20 million, $30 million, $40 million a year and someone selling hot dogs in the stands. If Wayne Gretzky were not on the ice, there would not be anybody in the stands to buy the hot dogs. Wayne Gretzky and his skills are in much shorter supply than someone who can stand in the stands and sell hot dogs. We should not in our frenzy in this whole debate get so carried away with our desire to deal with those who have damaged the system by their failure to live up to their responsibilities that we, once again, make any statements that would cause us to try to repeal the law of supply and demand. I see my colleagues are seeking recognition. I have carried on long enough. I leave with this one last thought: If we are going to deal with these issues, we should deal with them in the way this bill deals with them and not in the proposal that Congress itself should set accounting standards or should set wages or caps or compensation. Past history tells us Congress can act in a hurry but repent at great leisure.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the Senator is going into territory I will deal with in my statement, but to keep it all in context as he is talking, I must raise this question. The Senator is one of the historians of the Senate. He has been around a good long time and probably will be around for longer than I will. Does the Senator from Delaware remember that in 1993 when we increased taxes in the Clinton tax increase, we also put a limit of $1 million on the total amount of deductions a company could take for salary for its employees? In other words, that CEO could not be paid over $1 million for his or her services and have the company deduct that as a legitimate expense for tax purposes.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, over the weekend I had the experience and the pleasure of narrating Aaron Copeland's ``Lincoln Portrait'' in a presentation by an orchestra back home in Utah. I had not done that before. Aaron Copeland took some of Abraham Lincoln's most stirring words and accompanied them with music, and it is a great opportunity for those of us who don't have as much musical ability as some others to participate in that kind of a presentation. I was interested that one of the things in the ``Lincoln Portrait'' by Aaron Copeland is a quotation from the Gettysburg Address, when Abraham Lincoln prophesied that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people and by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth. If the Ninth Circuit Court position is upheld and made universal, that means that Aaron Copeland's tribute to the memory of Abraham Lincoln will have to be censored and that we will no longer allow our schoolchildren to learn the Gettysburg Address. Indeed, if this position is upheld, we will no longer be able to teach our children the Declaration of Independence because Thomas Jefferson referred to our rights as having been endowed by the Creator. The Ninth Circuit makes it very clear that they do not believe any public official should speak of the Creator in a way that implies that he exists or, if you prefer, that she exists. The word ``God'' is sufficiently universal and nonspecific as to allow those who use it to ascribe any quality, any gender, any doctrine, any position that those people might wish to ascribe to it. It is inconceivable to me that the Ninth Circuit should suggest that the generic term ``God'' is somehow endorsement of a specific religion. It is interesting that the vote we have just taken takes place under words carved in marble, literally carved in marble and gilded in gold here in the Senate Chamber, that say: ``In God we trust.'' I would hope that the judges on the Ninth Circuit would not attempt to send U.S. marshals into the Chamber of the Senate with jackhammers in an effort to remove that marble from above our entryway. It has been there since the Chamber was built. I hope it remains there as long as the Chamber remains, the judges on the Ninth Circuit to the contrary notwithstanding. As I walked over to come to this vote, I came under the flags of the 50 States. They are displayed in the walkway in the tunnel that comes between the Senate Office Building and the Capitol. I noticed that on two of those flags, Florida and Georgia, there are the same words that we have here in the Chamber, ``in God we trust.'' I wonder if the justices of the Ninth Circuit wish to order the State legislatures of those two States to change the State flags in their effort to see to it that we remove any reference whatsoever to God from our public discourse. Oh, I understand that they do not wish to remove all references to God. It will still clearly be fine for the people in Hollywood and on television to curse people in the name of God. It will only be illegal for someone to bless people in the name of God. The use of the name of deity in oaths of blasphemy are protected under the first amendment. It is just the use of the name of God in expressions of belief that these judges wish to strike down--an inconsistency which I hope will enter into their hearts and make them realize how foolish their decision is. Finally, my mind goes back to the experience in the Middle Ages when Galileo--who said that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Sun revolving around the Earth--was forced by the legal structure of his time to recant. And in order to save his life he did so. He stood there and proclaimed aloud that the Sun revolved around the Earth, and then as he stepped away from the place where he had made that public recantation, he muttered--speaking of the Earth going around the Sun--``nonetheless, it still revolves.'' Regardless of what the courts may say, the American people still trust in God. As long as they do, it will remain our national motto because it is a correct statement of how we feel, and it belongs in the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Texas. I would say to the Senator from Massachusetts if he were still in the Chamber, I would be happy to take action on his bill. The action I would seek to take would be to kill it. That is effectively what we have done with our objection. But if the Senator from Massachusetts can get the majority leader to bring it up in another place, I will be happy to vote to kill it in that place, too. I do so not because I am hardhearted, not because I think the people who are at the bottom of the economic ladder don't need help, not because I want to hurt them, but because I want to help them. I have often said that if I could control what we carve in marble around here, along with the Latin mottos and the other statements we have, we should probably have before us at all times the statement: You cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. We keep trying in government to repeal the law of supply and demand. We keep trying to set prices or wages at a level different than the market. Well, I don't have the Ph.D. degree in economics my friend from Texas has, but I learned in Economics I that when government sets a price different from where the market would set it, you get one of two things: either a shortage or a surplus. If government sets the price on a commodity and says, this is what we will pay for this commodity because everybody ought to have access to it, and they set the price by law too low, you get a shortage of that commodity because no one wants to produce it at that artificially low price. We have seen that. Remember when there was price control on natural gas and there was an insufficient supply of natural gas. You got a shortage. When Ronald Reagan became President, he said: We are going to remove price controls on natural gas, and many people--I was not in the Chamber so I can't tell you whether there are some who are still here who were there at the time--said: Without price regulation, the price of natural gas will go through the roof. Guess what happened. When we removed the artificial restraint on the price of natural gas, it went up temporarily enough to get a lot of people producing natural gas, and then it came down, ironically, to a price below the price the Government had set, once the market forces took over and people started producing natural gas. You can get a shortage or you can get a surplus. I remember when my father was on the Banking Committee and the Government set the price of silver for silver coinage. It was higher than the market would pay for silver, and the Government stockpile of silver got bigger and bigger and bigger because people were producing silver, not for the market but for the Government, at an artificially high price. What does that have to do with the minimum wage? Simply this: If you set the price of unskilled labor by Government fiat at a place where the market would not put it, you are going to create a shortage of jobs. If Government guarantees a price of labor higher than the market, you will get a surplus of people applying for those jobs. It is as simple and as inexorable as that. You cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. What segment of our economy has the highest level of unemployment? It is the inner cities, among African-American males of teen age. They have the highest level of unemployment of any group measure in the country. Why? Because jobs in the inner city for teenagers who don't have skills have been priced out of the market by minimum wage legislation. The Senator from Texas talked about his first experience. I went to work at 50 cents an hour when I was 14 years old, and I had the same kind of experience the Senator did. I didn't need the money, but I certainly needed the experience. It taught me the necessity of showing up on time. It taught me the necessity of being dependable, of doing the kinds of things my supervisor wanted me to do whether I wanted to do them or not. It got me involved in a way that I have found valuable all the rest of my life. If the minimum wage, which was 40 cents an hour at the time--so I was above the minimum wage by 10 cents--had been raised to 65 cents an hour, I would have lost my job. I wasn't worth 65 cents an hour to my employer. Frankly, I was barely worth 50. I would have lost my job. I cannot understand why some people insist that the poor are better off unemployed at a high rate than working at a slightly lower rate. But that is what we have; that is where we are. We are talking about this trade bill. We are saying it will help the American economy. At the time when the economy was doing perhaps its best, during the 1990s, and Alan Greenspan came before the Banking Committee, a Senator asked him: In these boom times, Mr. Chairman, who is benefiting the most from America's prosperity? I could tell by the way the Senator framed the question that he expected Greenspan to say ``the people at the top'' because the Senator was particularly concerned about what he considered to be an improper gap between the people at the top and the people at the bottom, and he was going to use Greenspan's answer to make a case for raising the minimum wage: The people at the top have gotten well, the people at the top have gotten fat in this time of great economic prosperity; it is the people at the bottom we need to help. I could tell that was the attitude of the Senator as he asked the question. He was disappointed in Greenspan's answer. Greenspan replied: Unquestionably, Senator, it is the people at the bottom who have benefited from this economic boom. My memory tells me he said the bottom fifth because, being an economist, he always has to quantify everything. So it was the people in the bottom quintile, to use an economist's phrase, who had benefited the most from the economic boom. Then the dialog went back and forth between Chairman Greenspan and the Senator, with the Senator saying: Yes, but the people at the top have gotten these enormous financial rewards by virtue of the good economy. Chairman Greenspan said: Yes, that is true, if you measure the benefit solely in dollars. However, if you measure the benefit in terms of life impact, the people at the bottom, who have had a 40-, 50-, 60- percent blessing in their lives by virtue of the fact that the economy is creating jobs for them, their life has been impacted far more than a millionaire who was at $2 million net worth and then saw his net worth go to $3 million. His lifestyle doesn't change much. His life circumstances don't change, if at all. He has more money to invest, and we hope he invests it in a way that will further stimulate the economy, but in terms of what happens in his life, nothing really changes by virtue of his increase in net worth. But someone who could not get a job or who couldn't see his job increase because the economy was flat, now in these times of prosperity can get a job and can see his opportunities increase. I remember in those times when I talked to employers in the State of Utah and I would ask them: What is your biggest problem? They said: We can't find anybody to hire. The economy is so good that everybody can get a job. I had one employer say to me: We will hold a mass job interview. We will advertise in the paper, and 15 or 20 people come in to listen to our pitch as to why they should come to work for us. We will start through our explanation of what this job is, and half of them will get up and walk out because they know they can walk down the street and hear somebody else's pitch and they can pick and choose. Our problem is, because the economy is so good and there are so many jobs, we are having hard times even filling the entry-level jobs. Right now, the economy is not so good. Right now, we don't have employers who are complaining about that problem. And right now is not the time to artificially price those entry-level jobs out of the market by attempting to repeal the law of supply and demand. Who will get hurt the most by an increase in the minimum wage? Ross Perot won't get hurt. Donald Trump won't get hurt. The people at the top won't be affected one way or the other. It is the person who is working for today's minimum wage, whose economic benefit to his employer would not justify the proposed minimum wage, who gets laid off. That is who gets hurt. It is the people at the bottom whom we are trying to help, who will, ironically, suffer the most if the minimum wage goes through. I can take you to employers in my State who laid people off the last time the minimum wage went up. Employers said: I simply cannot justify it anymore. I would like to pay them, I would like to have them working for me. But, frankly, the economic return I get from them is not worth it when the minimum wage goes up. I am going to lay them off. I can get the same job done with mechanization or some other device, or I can simply do without it in my business. It is just not worth it to me to pay that much. So those people walked off the job into the unemployment lines, with the cold comfort that their nominal rate was now 50 cents or 75 cents higher than it had been. They were not collecting it, but at least they had the warm feeling of knowing the Government determined that was what they were worth. The market determines who gets hired. The market determines who gets paid. We cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. So I say again, the Senator from Massachusetts says he wants action on this bill and he is disturbed that we are not willing to take action. I would be willing to take action, and the action I would want to take for the benefit of the people at the bottom, for the benefit of the African-American teenagers in inner cities who cannot get work, for the benefit of those who are just trying to start out, would be to say let's kill this bill, let's take care of the people at the bottom the best way we can, but one of the things we should not do is price their jobs out of the market and put them in the unemployment lines. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, as we go through the details of this debate, I think it would be well for us to take a moment at the beginning to look at the overall situation we face and try to put this debate into some kind of context. A fundamental principle that we need to remember in all of these conversations and discussions is this: All money comes from the economy. It does not come from the budget. It does not come from the actions of the Congress. It comes from the economy. If there were no underlying economy, there would be no money for the Federal Government to allocate. We have seen governments around the world that have tried to create money with no economy by passing budgets, and we have seen the disaster that occurs. So the fundamental principle that we need to address, to begin with, is what are we doing that will help the economy grow? What are we doing with trade promotion that will make the American economy stronger? If we can always keep that in mind as we address these various amendments, we will not do harm to our Government or what it is we are trying to accomplish for our citizens. The next principle that follows from that one is this: The most significant thing we can do to help the economy grow is to increase productivity--increase productivity of capital, of labor, of our money, that it is invested in the right places, so that we do not do things that will cause the economy to be less productive than it would be otherwise. These are two very strong fundamentals. We must keep the economy strong and growing. The way to keep the economy strong and growing is to increase productivity. That brings us to the Gregg amendment. The Gregg amendment would strike out a wage subsidy program that is currently in the bill that is clearly antiproductive. That is, the bill as it currently stands, would decrease American worker productivity in ways that we have already seen historically demonstrated in other countries. We can go, particularly, to the European countries and discover that they have problems with productivity, and they have problems with new job creation. One of the reasons they have problems is that they have structurally built into their economy a subsidy for nonproductive worker activity. It sounds very benign--indeed beneficial--to say to a worker: well, you have lost your job and therefore we will tide you over to another situation until you can get back on your feet. We have unemployment compensation for that. We have other safety net provisions. But the Europeans, by and large, have adopted the notion that we not only tide you over, we make you whole and keep you in your present income circumstance regardless of our employment circumstance. I had this brought home very dramatically when the company that I ran came into difficulties and lost some clients and had to face laying off some people--ultimately including me. One of my employees, who was in our European subsidiary, said this with a complete straight face, not understanding how America works: How many months do we get from the Government in terms of maintaining our present salaries when this company fails? I said: None. He said: In the country where I am working, they get a year and a half to 2 years of continuation at present salary. I said: Sorry, you are working for an American company--and he had come back here from Europe--and you are here in America. You have to find another job. He did. He not only found another job, he found a better job than the one he had with me. I had to find another job as my company failed. I did. If we had been under the circumstances of the language that is in this bill, we could have said to ourselves that we did not have any pressure to find another job; we could be subsidized where we were. We did not need to move forward. We could go just as things were, and the economy, as a whole, magnified from this example, would become less productive. Putting it into context again, looking at it as a general principle, here are the principles: If the economy is not strong, we will not have any money to allocate. If the economy is not seeing increased productivity every year, it will not remain strong, and we can look at our European friends and say, if we do what they have done, in the name of compassion for our workers, we will end up hurting our workers, our economy, and our Government. Sometimes it takes the spur of a little bit of pressure to keep Americans going. But our historic pattern has been that the strong economy helps not only the people at the top but, foremost, it helps the people at the bottom. Keeping them in a temporary position of stability ultimately produces long-term detriment to the economy and to the individuals themselves. For that reason, I support the Gregg amendment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to express my support for President Bush's nomination of Paul G. Cassell for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah. The Judiciary Committee approved Professor Cassell by voice vote on May 2, 2002, and I would urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this nomination. Paul Cassell has excellent academic credentials. He graduated from Stanford University Law School, where he was president of the Stanford Law Review. Following law school he served two clerkships, one for then-Judge Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and one for Chief Justice Warren Burger of the U.S. Supreme Court. Cassell's professional experience includes service as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and also Associate Deputy Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. As a professor at the University of Utah College of Law, he distinguished himself as a popular and well- respected teacher. His scholarship includes over 25 published law review articles, as well as numerous articles in major newspapers and periodicals. Professor Cassell has become a national expert on criminal procedure and evidence and one of the Nation's leading experts on victims' rights. He has represented victims of crime across the country, always on a pro bono basis. For instance, he represented victims of the Oklahoma City bombing in their efforts to observe the trial and sentencing proceedings. His advocacy is the reason why those families did not lose the right to observe the McVeigh trial. Recently, his pro bono efforts resulted in a significant victory for victims of crime in the Utah Supreme Court. On March 12, 2002, in State v. Casey, the court agreed with Professor Cassell that crime victims have the right to be heard before any plea bargain is accepted by the court and the right to appeal issues relating to that right. As a result of Cassell's efforts, this opinion recognized that victims have an important role to play in our criminal justice system and that their rights must be respected by courts and prosecutors. Professor Cassell has also been actively involved in fighting domestic violence and sexual assault in Utah. In April 2002, Professor Cassell filed briefs in the Utah Supreme Court on behalf of the Rape Recovery Center and the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence to protect the confidentiality of rape crisis counseling records. Additionally, Professor Cassell has been an active participant in legal affairs in Utah. For many years, he has served as the chair of the Legislative Committee of the Utah Council on Victims of Crime as well as a member on the Utah Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Rules of Criminal Procedure. In previous weeks many of my colleagues have highlighted the need to address the vacancy crisis in the Federal courts. I am concerned that there are some in the Senate who are perpetuating this vacancy. The Senate must do its part to act swiftly on the President's nominees. I have voiced concern in the past that certain Senators have made it known that they will require that a nominee be recommended by the American Bar Association. While I believe that this is an unnecessary requirement and an extra-constitutional test, Paul Cassell has, nonetheless, passed this test and a substantial majority of the American Bar Association review committee rates him ``well qualified'' to be a Federal judge. Paul Cassell's long list of credentials indicate his preparedness to serve as a Federal judge. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the nomination of Paul G. Cassell for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, today it gives me great pleasure to introduce for the Senate's consideration legislation establishing the National Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area. Spanning 250 miles, from the small town of Fairview, UT southward to our border with Arizona, the area encompassed by the National Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area includes outstanding examples of historical, cultural, and natural resources shaped by the Mormon pioneers. The story of the Mormon pioneers is one of the most compelling and captivating in our Nation's history. After traveling 1,400 miles from Illinois either by wagon or by pulling a handcart the pioneers came to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Along the way, the pioneers experienced many hardships including starvation, dehydration, exposure to the elements, Indian attacks, and religious persecution to name a few. Many people died during their journey. Shortly after arriving in and establishing Salt Lake City, Brigham Young dispatched pioneers to establish communities in present day Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, and other regions of Utah. The vast colonization effort in no way ended the hardship experienced by the pioneers. Throughout the area included in my proposal are numerous stories of pioneers who perserved through challenging circumstances. Communities such as Panguitch have Quilt Days every year to commemorate the sacrifice and fortitude of its pioneers whose efforts saved the community from starvation in 1864. The Quilt Days celebration is a remembrance of an event known as the Quilt Walk, in which a group of men from Panguitch attempted to cross over the mountains to Parowan, a community to the west, to procure food during the community's first winter. Because of deep snows the pioneers were unable to trek across the mountains. Using their quilts, the pioneers formed a path which would support their weight and were able to reach Parowan, secure food, and return to Panguitch. There are other remarkable stories in the proposed heritage area that demonstrate the tenacity of the Mormon pioneers. At times in order to survive, the pioneers had to overcome major natural obstacles. One such obstacle was the Hole-in-the-Rock. In 1880 a group of 250 people, 80 wagons, and 1,000 head of cattle came upon the Colorado River Gorge. After looking for sometime to find an acceptable path to the river, the pioneers found a narrow crevice leading to the bottom of the gorge. Because the crevice was too narrow to accommodate their wagons, the pioneers spent six weeks enlarging the crevice by hand, using hammers, chisels, and blasting powder, so wagons could pass. Today the Hole-in-the-Rock stands as a monument to the resourcefulness of the Mormon pioneers. The National Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area will serve as special recognition to the people and places that have contributed greatly to our Nation's development. Throughout the heritage area are wonderful examples of architecture, such as the community of Spring City, heritage products, and cultural events, such as the Mormon Miracle Pageant, that demonstrate the way-of-life of the pioneers. This designation will allow for the conservation of historical and cultural resources, the establishment of interpretive exhibits, will increase public awareness, and specifically allows for the preservation of historic buildings. This is a locally based, locally supported undertaking. My legislation has broad support from Sanpete, Sevier, Piute, Garfield, and Kane Counties. Furthermore, nothing in my legislation affects private property, land use planning, or zoning. I am very proud to introduce this legislation today. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to pass this legislation this year.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, today it gives me great pleasure to introduce for the Senate's consideration legislation establishing the National Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area. Spanning 250 miles, from the small town of Fairview, UT southward to our border with Arizona, the area encompassed by the National Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area includes outstanding examples of historical, cultural, and natural resources shaped by the Mormon pioneers. The story of the Mormon pioneers is one of the most compelling and captivating in our Nation's history. After traveling 1,400 miles from Illinois either by wagon or by pulling a handcart the pioneers came to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Along the way, the pioneers experienced many hardships including starvation, dehydration, exposure to the elements, Indian attacks, and religious persecution to name a few. Many people died during their journey. Shortly after arriving in and establishing Salt Lake City, Brigham Young dispatched pioneers to establish communities in present day Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, and other regions of Utah. The vast colonization effort in no way ended the hardship experienced by the pioneers. Throughout the area included in my proposal are numerous stories of pioneers who perserved through challenging circumstances. Communities such as Panguitch have Quilt Days every year to commemorate the sacrifice and fortitude of its pioneers whose efforts saved the community from starvation in 1864. The Quilt Days celebration is a remembrance of an event known as the Quilt Walk, in which a group of men from Panguitch attempted to cross over the mountains to Parowan, a community to the west, to procure food during the community's first winter. Because of deep snows the pioneers were unable to trek across the mountains. Using their quilts, the pioneers formed a path which would support their weight and were able to reach Parowan, secure food, and return to Panguitch. There are other remarkable stories in the proposed heritage area that demonstrate the tenacity of the Mormon pioneers. At times in order to survive, the pioneers had to overcome major natural obstacles. One such obstacle was the Hole-in-the-Rock. In 1880 a group of 250 people, 80 wagons, and 1,000 head of cattle came upon the Colorado River Gorge. After looking for sometime to find an acceptable path to the river, the pioneers found a narrow crevice leading to the bottom of the gorge. Because the crevice was too narrow to accommodate their wagons, the pioneers spent six weeks enlarging the crevice by hand, using hammers, chisels, and blasting powder, so wagons could pass. Today the Hole-in-the-Rock stands as a monument to the resourcefulness of the Mormon pioneers. The National Mormon Pioneer Heritage Area will serve as special recognition to the people and places that have contributed greatly to our Nation's development. Throughout the heritage area are wonderful examples of architecture, such as the community of Spring City, heritage products, and cultural events, such as the Mormon Miracle Pageant, that demonstrate the way-of-life of the pioneers. This designation will allow for the conservation of historical and cultural resources, the establishment of interpretive exhibits, will increase public awareness, and specifically allows for the preservation of historic buildings. This is a locally based, locally supported undertaking. My legislation has broad support from Sanpete, Sevier, Piute, Garfield, and Kane Counties. Furthermore, nothing in my legislation affects private property, land use planning, or zoning. I am very proud to introduce this legislation today. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to pass this legislation this year.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, like the Senator from Kentucky, I have done everything I could throughout my time in the Senate to see that this bill does not become law. As the Senator from Kentucky, I can count and have thrown in the towel and become somewhat philosophical about it. I read in the newspapers about lawyers who are meeting down on K street even as we speak drawing up their alternative plan on the assumption that the President will sign this measure. It becomes very clear that the amount of money in politics will not diminish as a result of this bill. It will simply stop flowing to political parties, where it is regulated and reported, and start flowing into dark corners where we will have no idea how it is gathered. We will have no idea who is behind it, and we will see it pop up in campaigns in ways that political parties would never use. That, I believe, is a genuine and proper aspect of the future that we face. It makes no difference to me personally because this is an incumbent protection bill. It virtually guarantees that parties will be handicapped in their effort to recruit challengers since the parties can no longer promise the challengers the kind of support they have been giving in the past. Challengers will be thrown into the never- never land of depending upon unknown special interest groups to come in without coordination and hopefully help the challenger. But as we have seen in my own State of Utah, many times the ads run by these special interest groups actually damage the people they are supposed to help. When the money was spent by parties, the challenger could call the party and say: Knock it off. But when it is spent by a special interest group, the challenger loses control of his campaign and is at the mercy of unknown forces and unreported money. That, I believe, is the future. But that is not why I have been so vigorous in opposing this bill. It is not why the Senator from Kentucky has been so vigorous in opposing this bill. We both took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States when we came to this body. I believe that oath is the most serious statement I have ever made in this Chamber. The Senator from Kentucky has led this fight fearlessly and courageously. The driving force has been our conviction that this bill is an affront to James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the others who created the Constitution and who gave us freedom of speech in the first amendment in the first place. If you read the 10th Federalist, which I have done in this Chamber, you find that Madison lays out very specifically and very clearly how the factions can control democracy if they are not handled in a proper way. The most significant proper way to deal with the scourge of factions is to have full disclosure and full understanding of what is going on with this. With this bill, we drive political money into the dark corners. While it is a sad day, in my view, it is nonetheless a good day. Like the Senator from Kentucky, I believe I have fought the good fight. I have lost, as has he, but I have been proud to be one of his lieutenants as he has been the captain of this fight. He is going to carry the fight on through the courts, which is his constitutional right. I believe the courts will side with him, and the positions he has taken in this debate more often than they will differ. We will have a future. The Republic still lives. We will not see anything change for the better, in my view. And those of us who have stood on principle walk out with our heads held high. I congratulate the other side. They have fought fair. They have fought vigorously. I have had a number of conversations with Senator Feingold in which we have both expressed our affection for each other but our deep disagreement on this issue. I trust that affection will continue even as the disagreement does. I close by paying tribute to Senator McConnell for the leadership he has shown, for the valiance that he has demonstrated, and for, in my view, the constitutional loyalty and fidelity he has given the United States in this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from Utah in recognizing the outstanding success of the Salt Lake 2002 Paralympic Winter Games. Ten days after the conclusion of the Winter Olympic Games, another group of elite athletes from around the world gathered in Salt Lake City to push the limits of physical achievement. These athletes, along with their coaches, trainers, families, and many volunteers, made the 2002 Paralympic Winter Games a remarkable 10-day event. The paralympic movement began in 1948, when Sir Ludwig Guttmann organized a sports competition for World War II veterans with spinal cord injuries in Stoke Mandeville, England. From that small beginning came what we now know as the Paralympic Games, which have grown dramatically in recent years. The Salt Lake games were the eighth official Paralympic Winter Games, with over 1,000 world class athletes from 36 countries competing in 100 medal events. While the athletes at the Paralympic Games all have some form of disability, the level of competition is no less intense. Because the games emphasize the participants' athletic achievements rather than their disabilities, spectators quickly forget that these athletes face special challenges and instead focus on the thrill of competition. I am proud of the accomplishments of my State during the past 2 months. The Paralympic Games were an outstanding partner to the Olympic Games. I congratulate everyone involved, especially the athletes, who showed us that with dedication and commitment, no obstacle is too great to overcome.