Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I would not, and I say to the Senator from Texas that I am familiar with the American legislation to which he refers because I have had, as I suppose the Senator from Texas has had, considerable complaints from my constituents about the regulations proposed under that bill and have contacted the administration, both the previous one and the present one, to say: Don't implement all aspects of this bill until you look at the specifics of these regulations; some of the things you are asking for in this bill would, in my opinion, and in the opinion of the constituents who have contacted me, make the American highways less safe than they are now. To say we must wait until that is done before we allow Mexican trucks in, in my view, would not only be a violation of NAFTA, it would be a violation of common sense because we are not implementing that for our own trucks on the grounds that it would not be good, safe procedure for our own trucks.

Mr. BENNETT. Without the benefit of a legal education, it seems to me that violates the clear language of the NAFTA treaty.

Mr. BENNETT. It certainly would appear to me to be a violation. It would seem an interesting anomaly if a Mexican trucking firm had insurance with Lloyd's of London and then was denied the right to operate on American highways on the grounds----

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Timpanogos Interagency Land Exchange Act of 2001. Before I explain the details of my legislation I would like to share with my colleagues a bit of the area's history. So everyone understands the lay of the land, Timpanogos Cave is in American Fork Canyon, which is a 45-50 minute drive south of Salt Lake City. Now that my colleagues have a general idea of the location let me share some information on the designation of the cave. After being solicited by a group of Utahns familiar with Timpanogos Cave, President Warren G. Harding, invoking the Antiquities Act, designated the Timpanogos Cave National Monument on October 14, 1922. It just so happens that today is the 77th anniversary of the dedication of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument. The dedication took place on July 25, 1924. The Secretary of the Interior at that time, Hubert Work, invited a group of journalists from New York City on a five week tour of the recently created national parks and monuments in the west. Ostensibly, the tour had been organized to publicize the features of the new parks of the quickly growing National Park Service. After spending over a month visiting National Parks, the group arrived at Timpanogos Cave National Monument of the 25th of July where Mr. Alvah Davison, a noted New York publisher, gave the dedication speech. I believe it is fitting on the 77th anniversary of the dedication of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument to introduce legislation that will enhance the unique visitor experience at this site. The Timpanogos Interagency Land Exchange Act of 2001 authorizes the exchange of 266 acres of United States Forest Service land for 37 acres of private land. This newly acquired land will serve as the site for a new visitor center and administrative offices of the Pleasant Grove Ranger district of the Uinta National Forest and the Timpanogos Cave National Monument. My legislation also authorizes the construction of the new interagency facility. This new facility, which will be located near the mouth of American Fork Canyon in the town of Highland, UT, will not only benefit the visiting public, but will also result in better coordination between the NPS and USFS. The land exchange requires the Secretary of Agriculture's approval and must conform with the ``Uniform Appraisal Standards for Federal Land Acquisitions.'' Furthermore, the exchange is being conducted with a private landowner who is willing to trade his property for various USFS parcels on the Uinta National Forest. The necessity for this legislation is ten years overdue. The original visitor center at Timpanogos Cave was built as part of the NPS's Mission '66 program. Unfortunately it burned down in 1991. In 1992, as an emergency measure, the NPS began use of a 20 foot by 60 foot double- wide trailer to serve temporarily as a make-shift visitor center. The trailer still serves today as the visitor center. The trailer is not suitable for the monument's annual visitation of 125,000 people. On high visitation days the center is easily overrun by the public. Additionally, the center suffers from rock-fall that has caused significant damage to the roof of the trailer and raises obvious safety issues. The NPS will not be the only beneficiary of this new site. As I stated before,the Pleasant Grove Ranger District of the Uinta National Forest will also be getting a new home. Currently, the Pleasant Grove Ranger District is housed in a 1950's era building that was not designed for today's staffing requirements or modern day computer and communications needs. It is simply too small and too outdated. The new facility will meet the space needs of the ranger district and be more technology friendly. Furthermore, the public now will be able to visit one conveniently located office to inquire about NPS and USFS activities. I view the Timpanogos Interagency Land Exchange Act of 2001 as simple legislation that will correct a decade old problem. I look forward to working with the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to move this legislation quickly.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Timpanogos Interagency Land Exchange Act of 2001. Before I explain the details of my legislation I would like to share with my colleagues a bit of the area's history. So everyone understands the lay of the land, Timpanogos Cave is in American Fork Canyon, which is a 45-50 minute drive south of Salt Lake City. Now that my colleagues have a general idea of the location let me share some information on the designation of the cave. After being solicited by a group of Utahns familiar with Timpanogos Cave, President Warren G. Harding, invoking the Antiquities Act, designated the Timpanogos Cave National Monument on October 14, 1922. It just so happens that today is the 77th anniversary of the dedication of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument. The dedication took place on July 25, 1924. The Secretary of the Interior at that time, Hubert Work, invited a group of journalists from New York City on a five week tour of the recently created national parks and monuments in the west. Ostensibly, the tour had been organized to publicize the features of the new parks of the quickly growing National Park Service. After spending over a month visiting National Parks, the group arrived at Timpanogos Cave National Monument of the 25th of July where Mr. Alvah Davison, a noted New York publisher, gave the dedication speech. I believe it is fitting on the 77th anniversary of the dedication of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument to introduce legislation that will enhance the unique visitor experience at this site. The Timpanogos Interagency Land Exchange Act of 2001 authorizes the exchange of 266 acres of United States Forest Service land for 37 acres of private land. This newly acquired land will serve as the site for a new visitor center and administrative offices of the Pleasant Grove Ranger district of the Uinta National Forest and the Timpanogos Cave National Monument. My legislation also authorizes the construction of the new interagency facility. This new facility, which will be located near the mouth of American Fork Canyon in the town of Highland, UT, will not only benefit the visiting public, but will also result in better coordination between the NPS and USFS. The land exchange requires the Secretary of Agriculture's approval and must conform with the ``Uniform Appraisal Standards for Federal Land Acquisitions.'' Furthermore, the exchange is being conducted with a private landowner who is willing to trade his property for various USFS parcels on the Uinta National Forest. The necessity for this legislation is ten years overdue. The original visitor center at Timpanogos Cave was built as part of the NPS's Mission '66 program. Unfortunately it burned down in 1991. In 1992, as an emergency measure, the NPS began use of a 20 foot by 60 foot double- wide trailer to serve temporarily as a make-shift visitor center. The trailer still serves today as the visitor center. The trailer is not suitable for the monument's annual visitation of 125,000 people. On high visitation days the center is easily overrun by the public. Additionally, the center suffers from rock-fall that has caused significant damage to the roof of the trailer and raises obvious safety issues. The NPS will not be the only beneficiary of this new site. As I stated before,the Pleasant Grove Ranger District of the Uinta National Forest will also be getting a new home. Currently, the Pleasant Grove Ranger District is housed in a 1950's era building that was not designed for today's staffing requirements or modern day computer and communications needs. It is simply too small and too outdated. The new facility will meet the space needs of the ranger district and be more technology friendly. Furthermore, the public now will be able to visit one conveniently located office to inquire about NPS and USFS activities. I view the Timpanogos Interagency Land Exchange Act of 2001 as simple legislation that will correct a decade old problem. I look forward to working with the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to move this legislation quickly.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I take the floor to join some of my other colleagues on the Banking Committee to express my admiration for and thanks to Jackie Clegg, who is serving her last day as Vice Chairman of the Export-Import Bank. Jackie Clegg might otherwise be known somewhere as Mrs. Chris Dodd. She began her career on the Banking Committee, where she met Senator Dodd, as a staffer for my predecessor, Jake Garn from Utah. She is a Utah alumna in Washington, of whom we are all very proud. She has performed expert service as a member of the Banking Committee staff and now in her new assignment on the Export-Import Bank. We wish her well as she ends her career there. I wish to note that Jackie has her priorities straight. One of the reasons she is leaving the Export-Import Bank is because she is expecting a child. It will be her first. It will also be Senator Dodd's first. I wish them both well in their new anticipated careers as parents. Jackie understands the importance of a family, and her willingness to give public service has been greatly appreciated, and her willingness now to give a different kind of service that perhaps will have a longer lasting impact as she prepares to bear and raise a child will be something for which she should be congratulated also. I join with the other members of the Banking Committee in saying to Jackie as she ends her service with the Export-Import Bank: Well done. We are grateful for your service. We are grateful for your leadership. We are grateful for the expenditure of your talents on behalf of your country. I say to her and Chris: Good luck and best wishes as you embark on the sea of parenthood. My wife and I have had six children. We now have 16 grandchildren. And we tell you, Jackie and Chris, it is very much worth it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator from Illinois is correct, and I support the funding for the replacement of the cc:mail system.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the Senator from Illinois has been very generous in his comments. I thank him for his generosity. He is being a bit modest because he took over the subcommittee with great vigor and has moved ahead on those portions of this bill in which he has a particular interest. That was demonstrated in both the report language and the priorities of the bill. I congratulate him for the way he handled his stewardship of this particular assignment. This is not the most glamorous subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee. But in some cases, it may be the most fun because we get to deal with people who interact with the Senate all of the time. The Senator from Illinois has my thanks and congratulations on the work he has done. I will not review the specifics of the bill that he has gone over. I will point out that I think the increases he has cited are appropriate. This bill has my full support. One of the items that is in the bill that the press has expressed great interest about is the million dollars that we put in for the Visitors Center. The million dollars is obviously not adequate to begin the Visitors Center. But since the House didn't put in anything, this becomes a placeholder for us to discuss an appropriation for the Visitors Center when we get to conference. I think the Congress needs the Visitors Center. The current schedule calls for it to be done prior to the inauguration of the next President, whether it be a reelection or a new election in January of 2005. That is the tight time schedule, and it will not yield. We will have an inauguration in the Capitol in January of 2005, whether the Visitors Center is done or not. We had conversations with the Architect of the Capitol about that during his hearing. We need to get on with that as quickly as we can. I look forward to working with Senator Durbin as he leads us in the effort to see to it that we get the proper funding and the proper direction to see that the Visitors Center comes to pass in a timely fashion. I am grateful to Senator Durbin for addressing the requirement of GAO to make an updated evaluation of the feasibility of consolidating all of the Capitol Hill Police forces. They are the Capitol Police that protects us. They are the Library police. They are the Government Printing Office police. Then there is the Supreme Court Police Force. The question is, what kind of efficiency could be gained by having all of them coordinated to produce some cost savings? That is a question that I have been addressing for some time. I appreciate Senator Durbin's willingness to support the GAO study to look in that direction. All in all, it has been a pleasure to work with Senator Durbin and a delight to help put this bill together with him. I thank the staff that have toiled late into many nights to put this before us today. I urge the Senate to adopt it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Mount Nebo Wilderness Boundary Adjustment Act. This legislation is intended to correct several small boundary issues that have frustrated Juab County and its residents' attempts to maintain their sources of water. Mount Nebo, located in Juab County, UT, is an 11,929 foot peak in the Wasatch Mountains. The surrounding area is home to bighorn sheep, spectacular views of the Great Basin, primitive recreation, and the source of water for many who live and farm around the towns of Nephi and Mona, UT. Due to the wilderness characteristics of the lands including and surrounding Mount Nebo, Congress designated the 28,000 acre Mount Nebo Wilderness as part of the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984. While the United States Forest Service was drawing the maps of the newly designated Mount Nebo Wilderness, nine areas were improperly included in the wilderness boundaries that contained springs, pipelines, and other water structures which provide water to the residents of Juab County. Water in the west is truly the lifeblood of the region. Without water, our towns and cities, both large and small, would dry up and blow away. Equally important is the ability to maintain springs, pipelines, and other structures that allow water to be put to beneficial use. The water that flows from the Mount Nebo Wilderness provides irrigation for Juab County farmers, is part of the Nephi City culinary water system, and provides water directly to a number of residents who live in close proximity to the wilderness. It should be noted that the water rights for some of these springs were granted as early as 1855 and have been providing water ever since. These pipelines and water structures are old and need constant maintenance. Wilderness prohibitions do not provide the flexibility needed by the county to maintain its water sources. This legislation would redraw the boundaries of the wilderness area to allow motorized access for the county and other affected users in order to maintain existing water structures. Because this boundary adjustment will result in the removal of lands from the Mount Nebo Wilderness, the county has identified existing USFS land adjacent to the wilderness to serve as replacement acreage which will result in a net gain of 14 acres of wilderness. I believe this is legislation that benefits all parties. The Forest Service will have a wilderness area with fewer access issues and the counties will be able to maintain their critical water sources. I am offering a simple piece of legislation that will solve a longstanding problem for one of Utah's counties. I would greatly appreciate Senator Bingaman's help in moving this bill through his committee as soon as possible.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Mount Nebo Wilderness Boundary Adjustment Act. This legislation is intended to correct several small boundary issues that have frustrated Juab County and its residents' attempts to maintain their sources of water. Mount Nebo, located in Juab County, UT, is an 11,929 foot peak in the Wasatch Mountains. The surrounding area is home to bighorn sheep, spectacular views of the Great Basin, primitive recreation, and the source of water for many who live and farm around the towns of Nephi and Mona, UT. Due to the wilderness characteristics of the lands including and surrounding Mount Nebo, Congress designated the 28,000 acre Mount Nebo Wilderness as part of the Utah Wilderness Act of 1984. While the United States Forest Service was drawing the maps of the newly designated Mount Nebo Wilderness, nine areas were improperly included in the wilderness boundaries that contained springs, pipelines, and other water structures which provide water to the residents of Juab County. Water in the west is truly the lifeblood of the region. Without water, our towns and cities, both large and small, would dry up and blow away. Equally important is the ability to maintain springs, pipelines, and other structures that allow water to be put to beneficial use. The water that flows from the Mount Nebo Wilderness provides irrigation for Juab County farmers, is part of the Nephi City culinary water system, and provides water directly to a number of residents who live in close proximity to the wilderness. It should be noted that the water rights for some of these springs were granted as early as 1855 and have been providing water ever since. These pipelines and water structures are old and need constant maintenance. Wilderness prohibitions do not provide the flexibility needed by the county to maintain its water sources. This legislation would redraw the boundaries of the wilderness area to allow motorized access for the county and other affected users in order to maintain existing water structures. Because this boundary adjustment will result in the removal of lands from the Mount Nebo Wilderness, the county has identified existing USFS land adjacent to the wilderness to serve as replacement acreage which will result in a net gain of 14 acres of wilderness. I believe this is legislation that benefits all parties. The Forest Service will have a wilderness area with fewer access issues and the counties will be able to maintain their critical water sources. I am offering a simple piece of legislation that will solve a longstanding problem for one of Utah's counties. I would greatly appreciate Senator Bingaman's help in moving this bill through his committee as soon as possible.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, there has been a lot of historic revision going on with respect to the creation of national monuments. I rise to set the record straight. The record is available for those who will research it, but for those who may have been listening to this debate, it needs some accuracy in terms of what happened. I was involved in it right from the public beginning, but I cannot say I was involved in it from the real beginning because the creation of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument was done in the dark. It was done without consultation with any member of the Utah delegation. And when members of the Utah delegation called the administration and asked what was going on, we were told: It is not happening. To be very specific, in one example, let me describe to the Members of the Senate and to the Chair an exchange I had with Katie McGinty, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality. First, to put this in historic context, a story appeared in the Washington Post saying that President Clinton was considering a major national monument in the State of Utah. Immediately after that story appeared, the administration denied it and said it was just a consideration, just an idea, and under no circumstances were they that far along in serious consideration of a national monument. Understand that the law required, under NEPA and appropriate environmental laws, that there be full public examination and consultation. The administration knew that. So they said, no, there will be no consultation because this is just an idea. I had had experience. I called Bruce Babbitt. Bruce Babbitt and I had a very frank relationship. Even though we disagreed on many things, we could be honest with each other. I called Bruce Babbitt. He was appropriately professional; he didn't let out any secrets. But he let me know that it was perhaps more than just an idea. I said: What should we be worried about? He told me some things we should be worried about in a theoretical sense. In case this was a real monument, we should be worried about the following. I wrote him a letter about them. Finally he called me. He said: Come on down to the Department of the Interior and we will talk about this. And with the other members of the Utah delegation, Senator Hatch and Congressman Hansen, I went down to Department of the Interior. It was on a Saturday morning when there was nobody else around. We sat in his conference room. Katie McGinty was there, along with a large number of his staff. I asked him repeatedly and directly: Mr. Secretary, will the President announce the creation of a national monument on Wednesday of this coming week, as the press is speculating that he will? Bruce Babbitt, being a careful lawyer, looked at me and said: No decision has been made. He didn't say yes and he didn't say no. He just said: No decision has been made. I took that, from my experience with the Clinton administration, to mean ``yep, it is a done deal; I can't tell you about it, but it is done.'' So convinced that the monument was going to be created, on Monday morning, in my office, Katie McGinty was there as the leading administration spokesperson on this issue. And I said: Ms. McGinty, you say this is under consideration but no decision has been made. Given the consideration, can you give me a copy of the map so that I can see what lands are under consideration? She looked me in the eye and said: Senator, there is no map. We are not that far along. This is just an idea. There is no map. I said: As soon as there is a map, can I have a copy? Oh, yes, Senator, as soon as we have a map, but we are not that far along. That was Monday morning. On Wednesday morning I get a phone call from Leon Panetta, Chief of Staff to President Clinton. Leon Panetta said: Senator, I am calling to tell you that this afternoon in Arizona, President Clinton will announce the formation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, the details of where it will be and everything with respect to it. I held my anger because Mr. Panetta obviously had nothing to do with this. This was a done deal outside even the office of the Chief of Staff of the White House. I said: National monuments require--and I listed all of the things that were involved in the creation of a national monument. He said: Yes, national monuments require all those things. There will be a 3-year period after the creation of the monument in which we will deal with those issues. Every one of those issues should have been dealt with publicly and openly prior to the creation of the national monument, but all of them had been held in secret. I expressed my disappointment in that. Mr. Panetta, in a moment of candor said: Well, Senator, we have 3 years in which to try to clean it all up. When Katie McGinty appeared before the appropriations subcommittee, I sat with the subcommittee and I said to her: I want to see all of the documents relating to this decision. You didn't create this out of whole cloth in a 24-hour period. I made it very clear that I did not believe her earlier statement that there was no map and no consideration if, in less than 48 hours, the President made a complete public disclosure of it. Presidents don't do things in 24-hour periods. Something as major as this doesn't just happen overnight. It isn't an immediate decision. It is staffed out somewhere. I said to her: I want to see all of the documents relating to the decision to create this national monument. Oh, yes, Senator. I will provide this. It was a completely open process. And then we got a map. I discovered, by the way, that the map had been in circulation among environmental groups for 3 months prior to the time when I asked her for a copy, and she told me none existed. We looked at the map to see how carefully drawn the boundaries were of this national treasure we were hearing about. In one of the towns in Utah, the high school football field was in the national monument. The map was drawn in secret. The map was drawn with people who would not consult with those who knew what was going on, and they had drawn the line so wildly that they had picked up the football field of a high school, thinking that was part of the national monument. One of my constituents found his front driveway in the national monument. He had to drive across national monument lands to get to his house because they had ignored the procedures so fully, they were so anxious to do this in secret and not consult with anybody so that they would have a political coup to announce in the middle of a Presidential campaign, that they made those kinds of mistakes. Is it now so sacred a land that we cannot take the football field out and turn it back to the high school? Is it so sacred a piece of land that we can't give the man his driveway back? I ask those questions rhetorically because we did that. In one of the previous Congresses, we redrew the boundaries and took out the football field and the driveway and some other mistakes that were made. I got my first set of documents from Katie McGinty, which were a speech made 3 years before and a travel bureau brochure. I went back to the Appropriations subcommittee meeting. It is not usually my style, but I am afraid I embarrassed her by holding these up and saying, ``You are suggesting that these are the basis of a decision to lock up 1.7 million acres in my home State? You are saying this is the complete record? I am sorry, I cannot accept that.'' Finally, at a later time, we got the complete file that she had with respect to the creation of this monument. I will say this in her defense. She did not shred any documents. When she turned the documents over to me, the file was complete. It contained the following documents in it: One dated several months before, where she says, ``We will have to abandon the project of trying to find lands in Utah that qualify for a national monument because it is clear there are none that do. Let's forget the Utah project because we can't find any lands that will qualify.'' And then, what I consider the smoking gun, there was a 5\1/ 2\ by 8\1/2\ piece of paper in which she had written in her own hand a note to the Vice President. The Vice President had been her boss. She was on his staff while he was a Senator. That would explain the familiarity of the note. It said: Al, the enviros have $500,000 to spend on this campaign, either for us or against us, depending on what we do in Utah. Signed, Katie. I can't vouch for that being the exact language, but that is close enough. I read and reread that note many times. The national monument was being created in southern Utah in the dark to stimulate the expenditure of $500,000 of campaign activity on behalf of the Clinton- Gore ticket in 1996. There was the entire motivation following on the earlier document where she said there aren't any lands that qualified. Now, the Senator from Illinois has said these are special lands and that they can explore for oil and gas on 95 percent of the public lands. This is reminiscent of a statement President Clinton made when he announced that monument. He said, ``Mining jobs are good jobs, but we can't have mines everywhere. So we will set this land apart so there won't be any mines here.'' If I had been there and had the opportunity to have an exchange with President Clinton, I would have said: President Clinton, you are exactly right. We cannot have mines everywhere. We can only have mines where there are minerals. Sure, you say 95 percent of the land is open for exploration. But nobody wants to explore lands where there is nothing to look for. Nobody wants to explore lands where there are no mineral resources. Why was this land set aside in a national monument? The Senator from Illinois says he wants to take his grandson out some day to look at the beauty of the land. I suggest to him, bring your grandson to look at it right now. You will have the same reaction we are getting from tourists who are coming. We were told when this was created that we would have an economic bonanza of tourists coming to look at this magnificent piece of scenery. I have gone to the county commissioners of the counties around there and said, ``How much tourism have you had?'' They said, ``None.'' None? This has had so much publicity, surely people have come from all over the world to see this scenic wonder. Yes, they come--once. They say we have come to see this magnificent scenery President Clinton talked about on the rim of the Grand Canyon. He picked that as his backdrop to make the announcement. That is scenic and it is worth coming from all over the world to see. That was his visual aid when he talked about the land in Utah. The folks show up from Germany and Japan and elsewhere to look at the land in Utah, but they say: This doesn't look any different than any of the other BLM land we can see. What is the big deal? They don't come back. We have seen two counties be destroyed economically since the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument, as people were afraid to invest in those counties. They were not very viable to begin with and have no tourism. With all of the publicity, there is no tourism. All right. I suggest to the Senator from Illinois, if he wants to take his grandchild to see this grand scenery, he can do it, and it will be there in future generations because it will look like all the rest of the scenery around it. Why was this monument created? It was created for one purpose, and one purpose only, and the documents I got from Katie McGinty that are made part of the public record make this abundantly clear, along with the smoking gun saying we are going to have $500,000 spent on our behalf if we do this, or spent against us if we don't. The reason the environmental groups were so anxious to see to it that this monument was created was because of the coal on the Kaiparowits Plateau. Let me describe to you how much coal there is there. It is not available on any of the other 95 percent of public lands. It is only available on the Kaiparowits Plateau. The average coal seam is about 4 to 6 feet high. You go into a mine that has a coal seam in West Virginia--and I see the senior Senator from West Virginia here, and he knows more about coal than any of the rest of us--you are going to think you have a pretty good seam if it is 6 feet high. The coal seam in Kaiparowits is 16 feet high. It runs back from where the mine mouth will be, over 160 miles. There is enough energy in that coal to heat and light the city of San Francisco for 300 years. And it has been known for decades. You don't have to explore this. You don't have to go looking for it. People have known about it. Over and above the coal generated by that incredible seam of coal is a pool of methane gas--coal methane gas, which, if tapped, would produce even more energy than the coal itself. There are no reliable estimates as to how much coal-based methane gas there is, other than ``huge.'' Now, neither the coal nor the coal methane gas can be used to deal with America's energy crisis. Instead, we are told: Go look someplace else. You have 95 percent of the public lands to look for. Don't look here where the coal is. Don't talk about a pipeline for methane gas here, where the methane gas is. Go look on lands we don't care about. The sole purpose of the monument was to prevent the development of that resource at Kaiparowits. Here I go way back in history and share with you this insight: When my father was here--he came here in 1951, elected in 1950--the No. 1 issue facing the West was water. One of the proposals that was made during the Eisenhower administration was that we build a dam on the Colorado River that would be known as the Glen Canyon Dam and would create behind it Lake Powell. The predecessors of today's environmental groups came and testified against the building of the Glen Canyon Dam. One of their arguments was: We will never, ever, need that much power. You have Boulder Dam--or Hoover Dam. It was called Boulder Dam in those days; now it is called Hoover Dam--we have all the power we will ever need for southern California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. To build the Glen Canyon Dam to produce that power will give us a glut of power, and we absolutely do not need it and never will need it. However, they said--and here is the point--if by some possible chance we are wrong and we do need that power, you still do not need the dam because there is all that coal at Kaiparowits. Let's burn the coal at Kaiparowits. This was in the 1950s when my father was here. I remember the debate. I was serving on his staff while much of it went on. Now the time has come when we need all the power at the Glen Canyon Dam which, incidentally, the Sierra Club wants to tear down, and we need some more power, and there sits a source of power perhaps unique in the world. But, no, we cannot touch it. The way to make sure we cannot touch it is to create a national monument around it and to do it in such a way that it will never be subject to public comment or review. We will do it in secret. We will do it without telling anybody, and when members of the Utah delegation ask us about our plans, we will lie to them. I am sorry to be that strong, but that is what happened because I asked the question directly, and I was given the answer directly, and the answer was a lie, demonstrable, provable in the Record. The answer I got was a lie. Now we are being told: Oh, these are special lands that we must preserve for our grandchildren, when in fact the genesis of this monument makes it clear these are special lands primarily because of the mineral resources that are in them, the energy sources that are there, the low-sulfur coal which, by the way, if mixed with more traditional coal, would lower emissions at every powerplant where it was used. For those who are concerned about greenhouse gases, they ought to be clamoring to open Kaiparowits to lower the emissions of greenhouse gases. If you say let's not do the coal, the coal is too bad, how about the coal-based methane gas? How about getting that out in these tremendous quantities? Oh, no, no, that would involve building a pipeline; we can't build a pipeline over these lands. That is the history, Mr. President. This is not as it has been painted to be. And I do not impugn the motives of those who are painting it differently because they were not there. They do not understand the degree of duplicity that went into the creation of this monument. If I sound angry, it is because, frankly, I was, as was everyone else associated with it, everyone else who was involved with the chicanery that was employed to create this monument. Are there portions of the Kaiparowits Plateau that probably belong in national monument status? The answer to that is yes, there are. Am I and the other members of the Utah delegation in favor of preserving those lands in national monument status? The answer is yes, we are, but it should be done in the kind of open process that the Congress decreed when they created NEPA. It is too late for that now. As Leon Panetta said to me, we have 3 years to pick up the pieces. The 3 years have passed and, quite frankly, the Interior Department and the folks at the BLM have, indeed, come up with what I consider to be an acceptable and logical management plan for the monument. But the fact is that all of those marvelous qualities for preservation in a national monument can be preserved and the coal can still be taken out. I have been to the site where the mine mouth will be, and I say mine mouth singularly because you can get at that entire seam that I described through a single mine entrance. It would not require multiple entrances. As luck would have it, or as nature has created it, that particular mine mouth is at the bottom of a circular canyon, which means it cannot be seen unless you are standing at the edge of the canyon looking down on it. It could not be seen by anybody 200 yards away. They would look right over the top of it on to the other side of the canyon and not even know it is there. The entire facility to take the coal out of the Kaiparowits mine could be on 60 acres at the bottom of that circular canyon. We are not talking about a huge environmental disaster that will spread over several square miles. We are not talking about a visual blight that could be seen for hundreds of miles. We are talking about a mine mouth at the bottom of a circular canyon that could go right into a sheer cliff, into the seam of coal, and bring out enough coal to light and heat the city of San Francisco for 300 years, and we are talking about coal-based methane gas on top of that coal seam that has even greater energy potential. It could be exploited without affecting in any way, other than psychologically, the beauty and power of the landscape on top of it. It can all be done underground--no strip mining, no open pits, no oil derricks. It can all be done in such a way that people who want a wilderness experience can have it unless somebody tells them: There is a pipeline 40 miles away from you. Oh, well, that spoils my experience to know there is a pipeline there. You cannot see it. It does not affect you in any way. You cannot hear it. But the fact that it was put in there somehow will spoil the experience. I am not suggesting we need to automatically go in there and start mining the coal right now, nor am I suggesting that we need to start putting down the initial wells to start getting the methane gas right now, because that would be as precipitous as the action was to create the monument in the first place. That would be a political action rather than an intelligent examination of this resource and what needs to be done. I am saying let's give the President the authority to do the studies, make the examination, receive the public comment, go through the process that should have been done in the first place; then, with all of the facts on his plate, make a decision that I hope will not be driven by political considerations. I hope that nowhere in the files will be a note that says: There is $500,000 for the campaign if we act this way, and $500,000 against us if we act that way. To summarize: I, the other Members of the Utah delegation, and the citizens of my State are as proud of the national heritage that we have received as anyone in this country. We take no back seat to anyone in our determination to see to it that these lands are kept as pristine and as preserved as they can possibly be. I will share an experience I had on the campaign trail for the first time I was down in that part of the State. A woman I had been talking to, hoping to get her to support me, walked out of the restaurant where we were meeting, in a small Utah town. She said: Bob, look around. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I looked around; I dutifully looked around. And she said: What do you see? Again, I didn't realize what she was talking about, so I didn't answer. She said: It is pristine, isn't it? It was then I realized she was looking at the land. I said: Yes, it is pristine. It is beautiful. Then she said: My family and I have been earning our living off this land for five generations. Tell me we don't love it. Tell me we have not been good stewards and can't take care of it and somebody else has to come in and order us off it in order for it to remain in good hands. I have always remembered that comment. It is indicative of the way the people of Utah feel about our State. We are making plans to do everything we can as we look ahead. The demographic trends say our State will double in population within the lifetime of my children. We are making plans now to preserve the open spaces, to preserve as much of that which is beautiful and magnificent as can be preserved. We take our stewardship very seriously and we take a back seat to no one in our determination to see that stewardship is passed on to our grandchildren and our great grandchildren. But we want to do it intelligently. We want to do it in a way that makes sense. We want to do it with everybody participating in the process who will come to the table and talk to us. We want to hear every idea. We want to hear every point of view. We don't want to see a repeat of what Katie McGinty and others in the Clinton administration did, of creating something in the dark, cramming it down people's throat without any opportunity for comment, and then declaring that it is forever and ever inviolate. That process only breeds ill will. That process only creates bad feelings. There is no place for that kind of process to ever be repeated. My objection to the amendment by the Senator from Illinois is--and he would enshrine the results of that process--not the process; he had nothing to do with the process. He didn't know what was going on. If he had, given his sense of fair play, he probably would have objected to it, but he would enshrine the results of that process into law forever. That, frankly, doesn't make sense. It is a process that does not deserve to be rewarded with that kind of perpetual reference. We need to deal with our lands in a way that is good for the lands, a way that is good for the people, a way that is good for our posterity, and enshrining what was done in the case of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument is not the way to do that. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I don't intend to be an expert in military matters, and I yield to those who do understand those matters. But I have to rise to oppose Senator McCain's amendment with respect to one of the offsets he has created that would cut the provisions in the supplemental in half for those funds that would be appropriated in support of the Olympics. I understand concern about the Olympics. I understand the sense that this is a sporting event. What is the Federal Government doing with respect to a sporting event? But I have to point out a few things with respect to the Olympics that take it out of the realm of the pure sporting event. The Senator from Arizona has talked about the Olympics in Atlanta as well as the Olympics in Los Angeles. I attended the Olympics in Los Angeles because I was living there, and I recognize that we live in a very different world than we did in 1984. The Olympics in Atlanta was the first Olympics at which we had a bomb in the United States, and as a result of the bomb that went off in Atlanta and the scare that came following that, President Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive No. 62, PDD 62, designating this as a Presidential event, changing the security arrangements of the Olympics forever. The whole circumstance surrounding the Olympics, now, as a result of PDD 62 are focused on international terrorism in a way that they were not in the more simple days of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 or certainly even in Atlanta. Now, as a result of PDD 62 creating this as a Presidential event, we as a government are now faced with these circumstances. And $52 million of the $62 million called for in the supplemental go to the Treasury Department and the Secret Service for a variety of functions surrounding PDD 62 and its requirements. The first deals with the core mission of the Secret Service which has to do with protecting the President, protecting foreign dignitaries, and dealing with counterterrorism. We are going to have an unprecedented number of foreign dignitaries attending these Olympics. That goes with every new Olympics. Every time there is a new Olympics, more foreign dignitaries show up than 4 years before. We must understand that the venues for these games, they being winter Olympics, are not focused around a stadium or a swimming pool. We are talking about a 900 square mile area, including some of the most mountainous territory in the United States. To protect all of that area requires a tremendous amount of effort on the part of the Secret Service. That is what the money is going for. There is a question of customs. We are getting people from all over the world to come to the Olympics--people who, as we saw in Munich, can pose as athletes and turn out to be terrorists, as well as athletes, their coaches, families, and, of course, spectators. Dealing with customs in the Treasury Department is where part of this money will go. The ATF, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, energized obviously by the experience in Atlanta where there was a bomb that went off, is now making sure that a great deal more activity is done to prevent that than was done in Atlanta. It is only prudent to do this. That is $52 million of the $60 million we are talking about in this supplemental going to the Treasury Department for those kinds of functions. The other $8 million goes to the Justice Department, the Agriculture Department, and the Interior Department. You would ask: What does Agriculture and Interior have to do with the Olympics? The fact is that a very large portion of the Olympics will take place on Forest Service land, which is policed by the Department of Agriculture, and BLM land, which is policed by the Department of the Interior. These agencies have the adequate facilities to deal with this, but, in the heightened activity surrounding the Olympics, they will have to pay their people overtime. They will get their people there. They have the trained people to do it, but they will have to pay airfare. There will have to be lodging. They will have to pay overtime. These agencies have been putting together this information. We can complain maybe this should have been done in the previous bill, it should have been taken care of in the 2001 appropriations bill and we should not have it before us as a supplemental, but the fact is, if we do not get it prior to the end of this fiscal year, the proper preparations will not be able to be made. This money is in the 2002 bill. The full $60 million is in the 2002 bill, which, in the normal course of governmental activity, that would be the proper way to do it. The fact is, however, we cannot change the time of the Olympic games. That is set in concrete, and if we do not do the money in a more readily available upfront manner, we will find we are facing the challenge of trying to have the money in the pipeline while the games are taking place. It seems in this situation, in the middle of the summer when the Sun is shining and it is hot outside, that this may not be a matter of that much pressing urgency. But if we have an international incident at the Olympics in Utah in 2002--if a foreign dignitary is attacked; if a terrorist attack goes on to try to embarrass any country--ours or any other--if there is a lapse in security and the fingers start to be pointed as to where were the Americans, why weren't they prepared--it will be a little difficult to say we wanted to put it off, we wanted to take it out of the supplemental and have it take place in the 2002 budget; we were only saving 4 or 5 months, but we wanted to use the money for something else for that 4- or 5-month period. I do not want to run that risk. I do not want to have the opportunity handed to an international terrorist that says the American Secret Service is underfunded, the Forest Rangers and others involved with policing the public lands have not been able to get their overtime in the right appropriations bill; we waited too late; the preparations were not made; therefore, we had this event. I respectfully suggest we reject the amendment of the Senator from Arizona and, instead of having this money come in the 2002 bill, have it stay where it is now, in the supplemental bill. It will be easier to get a delay on some of these other things for 4 months, things that do not have a firm time scale connected to them, than it will be to have this money delayed for the Olympics. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. amendment no. 862

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I venture into this debate with a little hesitancy because I don't have the expertise that the Senator from Tennessee and others have in this field. But I want to confine my comments to my experience as an employer. As those who have listened to me know, I come to the Senate from a business background and consider myself a businessman rather than a politician. I have the experience of being an employer dealing with health care. It is that experience I would like to share with the Senate today. I will open by asking unanimous consent that a letter I received today be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. BENNETT. This letter is from Ron Christensen, who is the vice president of a construction company in a relatively small town in Utah, and the key points of the letter are those which have been made over and over again during this debate. That is, Mr. Christensen tells us that if the Kennedy-McCain bill passes, he will be forced to stop providing health care for his employees. A lot of people listen to this threat, and they say businesses are hard-hearted, businesses are just looking for ways to punish their employees, that businessmen and businesswomen are always motivated by greed, and here is an opportunity for them to save money, they will take the opportunity to save money whenever they get the excuse. Having run a business, I can assure you that is clearly not true. When you run a business, you compete for employees, and you do everything you can to get the best ones to come to work for you. You create salary packages and benefit packages that are better than those at the business down the street so that someone will come to work for you and be loyal to you and help you build your business. You don't view your employees as people to be exploited. You view your employees as a major asset. If you don't have that view, frankly, you won't be in business very long. So why is this person, who feels this way about his employees and who in his letter describes an excellent health care plan that he offers to his employees, saying that if this bill passes, he will withdraw health benefits and thereby run the risk of losing employees who are so vital and important to his success? The reason, of course, is fear of lawsuits. He says: If this legislation becomes law, the only way to protect my company from lawsuits will be to drop health care benefits altogether, and we will do this. I simply cannot afford to expose our company to the potential liability from health care lawsuits. Even if employers could be shielded from liability, more lawsuits against health care plans will result in higher premiums I pay for health care. I know how true Mr. Christensen's statement is. It is one thing for an employer to say, I have a defined amount of money that I have to spend on health care plans; I am willing to pay that; indeed, I have to pay that if I am going to attract and hold good employees. It is another thing to say, I am putting the entire future of the enterprise at risk by exposing it to lawsuits. I cannot take that risk, so I will say, even though it is going to jeopardize my business by diminishing my ability to attract and hold quality employees, I have to do it because the alternative is so Draconian that I simply cannot escape it. That is the real world. It is not the world we live in back here in Washington. That is not the kind of discussion we have here, but it is the real world, and we should understand that as we make our decisions. I remember during a similar discussion over lawsuits with respect to falling stock prices that eventually resulted in the passage of securities legislation that put out of business some of the striped- suit law firms, that Ralph Nader appearing before the Senate Banking Committee kept pressing the point that lawsuits were always good. He said, Nobody ever settled a lawsuit out of court unless he had something to hide. I remember that very clearly because Mr. Nader made that statement in response to me and some of the comments I was making. I pointed out to him that while I was the CEO of the company I headed prior to coming to the Senate, I settled a lawsuit out of court, and I not only had nothing to hide, I felt strongly I was in the right. So why did I settle the lawsuit? Quite simply because I had to save the company. The legal fees of prosecuting that lawsuit at that point in the company's history were sufficiently high as to jeopardize the survival of the firm. So I swallowed hard the issue of whether or not we were in the right and decided to save the company by settling the suit out of court without proving the point. I have been there. I know how a lawsuit can threaten the survival of a firm. How significant is this in terms of decreasing health care coverage for people? A study has been done that says for every 1-percent increase in premium rates, 300,000 Americans lose their health coverage. That is an interesting number when you realize the Kennedy- McCain bill would increase rates, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by 4.2 percent. Do the math: 300,000 lose their health coverage every time it goes up 1 percent. You multiply that by 4.2 and you get 1.26 million more uninsured. I think that is a low figure, because if you take the evidence coming from the employer whose letter I cited and spread it out over the rest of the country, we find out that, in addition to those who will lose their coverage because the premium goes up, there are those who will lose their coverage regardless of where the premium is simply because of the fear of the lawsuits. Some cynics have suggested that maybe that is the reason behind the push for the Kennedy-McCain bill. They want people to lose their coverage so the pool of uninsured Americans will grow so large that there will then be demand for a Government health care plan, which is what Senator Kennedy has told us he prefers all along. I would not ascribe those kinds of motives to Senator Kennedy. I think instead he is simply acting out of unfamiliarity with the way businesses are really run in America. I want to make it clear that the comments being made by employers around the country that passage of the Kennedy-McCain bill will result in the loss of health care benefits for millions of Americans are not political hyperbole. They are simply statements of fact based on the experience of men and women who are building businesses, employing Americans, moving forward to keep the economy growing, but who are terrified, I think accurately and properly, of the prospect of a wild increase in the number of lawsuits that might come. We are told some States have already done this and the lawsuits have not gone up; so, therefore, that proves we will not have lawsuits on a national basis. I am not sure we can make that determination and, once again, the State laws are not exactly comparable to this law, and they are not subject to the kind of examination that has been given this law by those who are looking at it through the glasses of realism. The other thing we hear around here often is: Forget the lawsuit side, the doctors are for this bill, the American Medical Association has endorsed this bill. That is true; the American Medical Association has endorsed the Kennedy-McCain bill and is very active in their statements in favor of it. Normally, that would be something that would impress me, but I share with you, Madam President, and the other Members of the Senate, an experience I had in my office today. I received a phone call from a doctor in Utah whom I have known for many years. He said, I am here at the meeting of the American Medical Association, and they are whipping us all up to call our Senators in support of the Kennedy-McCain bill. And so I am doing what I have been asked; I am calling my Senator with respect to the Kennedy-McCain bill so I can report back to the American Medical Association that I have done what I was told to do. As long as I have you on the phone, let me tell you what I really think. I am opposed to the Kennedy-McCain bill. I think it is a mistake. I much prefer the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords bill. I think it would work far better for the medical profession in Utah and the patients I deal with in Utah, and, Senator, I trust you to do the right thing. The American Medical Association succeeded in their lobbying efforts to get a hometown doctor to call me, but they probably were not pleased with what the hometown doctor said. Based on his experience, based on his understanding of where things are, he recommends we defeat Kennedy- McCain and go in the direction of the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords bill. The fact is, of course, we do not know in advance what will be all of the consequences of the legislation we pass. The one thing I have learned around here is that whatever other laws we pass, the one law we pass over and over is the law of unintended consequences. We do not know what the unintended consequences will be from either of these bills, but I have learned as a result of discovering the impact of the law of unintended consequences that the impression to go slow, the desire to be careful, the desire to move in incremental steps rather than a sweeping bold approach that we love to call for when we are running for reelection, is the right desire. That is another reason why we should try the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords bill, which goes further than many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle would like to go toward a Patients' Bill of Rights. Let's see how it works before we take the next step, which could have catastrophic consequences. I say catastrophic consequences because I am talking about the cancellation of health care for many Americans. I am talking about the rising disillusionment with the whole activity of what we do with respect to health care on the part of many Americans and then ultimately a demagogic call for the Government to take everything over, and we are back into the disaster, the train wreck we went through in the 103d Congress when President Clinton tried to implement that kind of solution. It tied up this body for months. It stopped everything. It produced maximum ill will all the way around. We stepped back from that. We took the approach I am talking about, which is to say let's do it a step at a time, let's do it with something we can get our arms around where the unintended consequences will be less radical and less sweeping. We passed the Kassebaum-Kennedy bill, which I was happy to cosponsor and support, and then we began to see some of the reforms that we could have had earlier if we had stayed away from the extremes proposed to us. We see reforms in the Patients' Bill of Rights area, reforms that can work. We see things that will give us experience, that will hold down the severity of the unintended consequences, if we go in the direction of the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords bill, but I fear if we go in the other direction we will only see the consequence that is predicted in this letter that will follow my remarks, where employer after employer will say, Sorry, we can't expose ourselves to this liability. And in the name of trying to help health care, we may end up destroying it altogether. That is, in my view, a serious mistake. Exhibit 1 Christensen & Griffith, Construction Company, Tooele, UT, June 19, 2001. Senator Robert Bennett, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington DC, Dear Senator Bennett: I suspect I am ``preaching to the choir'' by sending this letter to you, but I want you to know I am strongly opposed to the Patients' Bill of Rights bill sponsored by Sens. Kennedy and McCain under consideration by the Senate. There are better ways to correct the few problems that get so much attention. My company prides itself on providing quality health care for our valued employees and their families. We provide a comprehensive plan which includes dental and have never had a complaint that could not be corrected. We are partially self insured and pay the total premium. No cost to the employee. Why mess with a good thing? The present system has kept costs in check and affordable. The politically motivated Kennedy- McCain bill will only drive up the cost of health insurance and encourage employers to pass more responsibility for health care to the employee. Unfortunately, the Kennedy-McCain bill threatens my ability to provide health care for my employees. However well- intentioned, this bill would expose employers like me to lawsuits between employees and the health care plan my company provides. Despite claims that this bill has a lawsuit ``exemption'' for employers, this protection is murky, at best, and does not adequately protect employers from lawsuits. In fact my company could be sued for simply having selected a health care plan for employees. If this legislation becomes law, the only way to protect my company from lawsuits will be to drop health care benefits altogether, and we will do this. I simply cannot afford to expose our company to the potential liability from health care lawsuits. Even if employers could be shielded from liability, more lawsuits against health care plans will result in higher premiums I pay for health care. A survey of construction companies last year found that 77% were faced with increased health insurance premiums, even without the potential added cost of this legislation. In order to stay in business more and more of the cost will have to be passed on to the employee. As an alternative, employees should be given access to a quick, independent external review process that would give patients the right to take their disputes to an independent panel for a quick decision. Employers are not bad people exploiting their employees as the unions would have us believe. Were it not for employers with a profit motive our economic system would not work. Please oppose this Kennedy-McCain expansion of liability as you consider managed care reform legislation. Don't destroy a system that has served us well and made health care affordable. Thank you for your consideration of my views. Yours Truly, R.I. Christensen, Vice President.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, the vote we just had recorded only eight votes in the ``nay'' column, and one of those eight was mine. I don't usually find myself that isolated. I thought on this occasion that it would be appropriate for me to explain why I voted against this bill. I am not sure what I would have done had my vote been decisive, because I recognize that we need to pass an elementary and secondary education bill. We need to move forward on an issue that President Bush has correctly identified as our No. 1 domestic priority. Nonetheless, I was troubled enough by the bill that I voted against it and wanted to make my reasons clear in the hope they might influence the conferees. I have three reasons for voting against this bill. The first one is money. The cost of this bill is twice what it was when the bill hit the floor to begin with. We added money here; we added money there. We had a drunken sailor's attitude toward this situation: Education is wonderful; let's throw money at it. I am troubled by that kind of view with respect to how we should legislate around here. It struck me as being a bit out of control. Secondly, as I heard more and more from the people in Utah who will have to live under this bill, they kept saying to me, This feels an awful lot like a Federal straitjacket. This feels an awful lot like Federal control. This feels an awful lot like we are losing the power to run our own schools. I find that troubling as well. As some of my colleagues have said, I didn't run for the federal school board; I ran for the U.S. Senate. Many of the decisions that were made with respect to this bill were decisions that were made on the assumption that Washington knows better than the local school boards, and that assumption troubles me. It is because of the third reason, as I looked at the bill as a whole, that I decided to vote against it. I am passionate enough in my commitment to education that I could swallow the idea of more money. Frankly, if we were getting the right results, I could look the other way and say, Well, since we are getting the right results, I can tolerate increased Federal control. But this bill is not a step forward in education. This bill is overwhelmingly timid. It has almost no significant new initiatives in it. It is simply funding the status quo to the maximum. The more I look at education, the more I think we need to break out of the status quo. We need to try new things. But any time a suggestion was made that we try something new, even on a pilot basis in a very limited sense in just a few places, it was swatted down. People talk about Government as if inertia at rest is the problem, that nothing ever gets done. It is my experience that it is inertia of motion that is the problem with Government. It is not just the law of physics. A body in motion tends to stay in motion and in the same direction, whether it is a body moving through space in the physical world or whether it is a Government agency moving through regulations that always does things the same way. It keeps things going. It takes yesterday's answers and tries to force them on today's problems. As I look at this bill overall, I do not see the boldness, the freshness, the challenge to do something different and try to break out of the old patterns that, frankly, were there when President Bush first submitted his education plan. We, in this body, have added so much baggage to that exciting first motion that it is hard to recognize the President's initiatives in this bill. They are buried under piles of money and piles of directions that are rooted in the status quo and in the past. So I decided that the bill is going to pass, regardless of what I try to do. But if I can draw a little bit of attention to the fact that the bill is not, in fact, as bold, as innovative, and as hopeful as it started out to be by casting a negative vote, then that would justify casting a negative vote. I don't expect very many people will listen to what I have to say, and I don't expect very many people will pay attention to the vote I have cast. But I remember when I first came here as a young Senator, someone said to me, Cast your vote with this in mind--how will you feel as you drive home thinking about it after the debate is over? I decided that as I drove home thinking about this one that I would drive home feeling better having cast the protest vote than I would if I had gone along with the large majority of my colleagues. I don't mean to suggest that anyone who voted for this bill was not voting out of complete, sincere dedication to the idea that this is something good. I don't mean to question the motives of anybody else. I simply want to explain my own. This bill has grown too expensive. This bill has grown into too much Federal control. And the end result, in terms of timidity and support for the status quo, is simply not worth those first two. That is why I opposed the bill. I hope the product that comes back to us from conference will be better and that I will then be in a position to support it.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise in support of an amendment to the Better Education for Students and Teachers Act that will make a minor but important technical change to the Rural Education Initiative, located in Title V of the bill. The Rural Education Initiative directs funds to school districts that lack the personnel and resources needed to compete for Federal competitive grants and often receive formula allocations in amounts too small to be effective in meeting their intended purposes. As the bill is currently drafted, districts must meet two requirements to qualify for grants under this program. One of these requirements is that the district must have less than 600 students. This requirement poses a problem for many States that have geographically large districts. For instance, in my home State of Utah, there are only 40 school districts. Compare this to States of similar or smaller geographic size, some of which have more than 500 districts. The result is that many districts in States like Utah have more than 600 students and therefore fail to qualify for rural assistance, despite the fact that these districts may be in the most rural parts of the State. I have been to these districts. If the members of this body were to travel with me to Beaver School District in Beaver, Utah, they would find it hard to dispute the fact that Beaver is a rural district. But the students in Beaver School District will not receive any assistance under the Rural Education Initiative as it is currently written. I do not wish to argue the merits of large districts versus small districts. The way a State chooses to run its educational system is rightly left up to State and local education authorities. However, Congress should not be in the business of penalizing States based on their educational systems. My amendment alters the Rural Education Initiative to include an either/or provision that will allow districts to qualify in one of two ways: a district must have less than 600 students or must have a total population density of less than ten people per square mile. This minor change will allow a handful of school districts that do not currently qualify to become eligible for funding under this provision. It is important to note that no school district currently qualifying under the Rural Education Initiative will be disqualified by my amendment. However, this change will have a serious impact on places like Beaver, Utah, and on many other rural school districts around the country. I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, we are all waiting for the conferees to come back to us with the tax bill. As we do that, I thought it might be appropriate for me to talk a little bit about some of the rhetoric that has surrounded the issue of taxes in the time we have together. If I may, I will be a little personal because I have experience with the issue of marginal rates which might be of some value to this debate and which I would like to share. As many Members of this body know, I was one of the founders of a business that started in what the pundits have come to call the decade of greed; that is, the 1980s. In that period of time, that which has been most commented on and most decried by the pundits is the fact that the top marginal tax rate was 28 percent. We are talking now about an attempt on the part of President Bush to bring that tax rate down to 33. It is pretty clear from the conversations I have had with the conferees that that is not going to happen. I think it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 35. Someone said: Why does Michael Jordan need a tax cut? Why does Ross Perot need a tax cut? Why does Donald Trump need a tax cut? Isn't it proper that they continue to pay the lion's share of the taxes in this country? And they do. The people in the top 1 percent pay most of the taxes. To put it in another statistic: The top 400 taxpayers--this is less than 1,000 tax returns--pay more than 40 million of the taxpayers down below; 400 pay more taxes in dollars received than 4 million people down below. Why do those 400 need a tax cut? They have plenty of money. That is the argument we hear. I will concede that I don't think Michael Jordan needs a tax cut; I don't think Donald Trump needs a tax cut; and I don't think Ross Perot needs a tax cut. But under the Constitution, we have equal protection of the laws, which means if you provide a tax cut for someone, for a good and logical reason, someone else who happens to be in the same boat, even if he is rich, gets the same equal protection of the law and gets the same tax cut. So it is the side effect, if you will, that Michael Jordan gets a tax cut. Here is the experience I had which I think gets ignored over and over and over again in the rhetoric that is thrown out with respect to tax rates. As I say, my associates and I started our business during the decade of greed when everybody was saying it was so terrible that the top marginal tax rate was 28 percent. We used, as most businesses did at that time and many businesses still do now, a provision of the tax law that is known as section S of the tax law. Those who use it are known as S corporations as a result of their election. All that means simply is that the profits of the corporation are not taxed at the corporate level. They flow through, as the Tax Code provides, to the individual tax returns of the shareholders. We had five principal shareholders. That meant that as the corporation earned money, that money flowed through to our tax returns. If I can be fairly dramatic, in terms of the impact on me, I was earning my salary as the CEO of that company, which I and my wife thought was a relatively modest salary, but I filed a tax return showing that I had earned more than $1 million. Why? Because my share of the profits of the corporation showed up on my tax return. Now it made absolutely no difference whatsoever to my take-home pay, which was tied to my salary, because the corporation did not give me any money beyond the money necessary to pay my share of the taxes. Why would we do that? There are two reasons we made the S corporation. The first and primary reason is that we wanted to avoid double taxation. If the corporation earned $1 and paid corporate taxes on it--and let's take the corporate rate at the time, which I believe was 38 percent--if the corporation earned $1 and paid 38 cents of that dollar to the Federal taxes and then gave the resulting money to the shareholder, the shareholder would then have to pay taxes a second time on the money that came as a dividend. If you make an S corporation, you only pay taxes once instead of twice. That is the primary reason people make the S choice. The second reason was that if we did the S choice, we only paid 28 percent on that $1 earned instead of 38 percent on that $1 earned. Naturally, we wanted to save the extra 10 percent, 10 cents on the dollar. Many people have the idea that when you earn money, you buy yachts and you take vacations and you waste the money overseas in what the Scriptures would call ``riotous living.'' In fact, of course, when you are growing a business, you need every penny. It goes into inventory. It goes into accounts receivable. It goes into capital investments. If the business is growing--and our business was doubling every year; it did that for about 6 years running--you are always behind. Indeed, I say to the students in business school, when I am asked to talk to them about this, the most terrifying thing you can do in a start-up business is make a profit, because then you owe taxes. Uncle Sam shows up and wants his tax money in cash. You don't have it in cash because, as I say, your profits are all tied up in inventory, all tied up financing your growth. You end up, in most instances, borrowing cash from the bank in order to pay your taxes. We paid a marginal rate of 28 cents out of every dollar we earned, and we plowed every one of the remaining 72 cents back into that business to make it grow. Our salaries did not increase. My take-home pay actually went down when that extra $1 million showed up on my tax return, because then I was being treated, as far as the Federal Government was concerned, as if I were a basketball star earning that $1 million, and that wiped out all of my deductions. That may not matter much to some people, but we had six children at the time, and that constituted a fairly significant amount of deductions that all of a sudden we couldn't take because we were ``rich.'' My take-home pay on my W-2 pay hadn't changed. The amount of money I was being paid by the corporation had not changed. All that had changed was the bookkeeping entry on my tax return. Well, I am not complaining because the business was successful--so successful that we could look back on it now and realize that that business started literally in somebody's basement, with 2 employees, a husband and a wife, that then doubled to 4 employees, and that is how many they had when I joined them; I made No. 5. That business is now employing about 4,000 people. They are paying literally millions of dollars in Federal taxes, both the corporation taxes, the income taxes of the payrolls that have been generated with those 4,000 folks, plus the suppliers, plus all the rest of it. It is a fairly typical American success story. The point of all this is not to bother you with details of my experience, but to point out that the difference between the top marginal rate of 28 percent that we pay and the current effective rate of 42 percent is 50 percent of the original amount; 14 points out of the 28 percent have been added on to the 28 percent. I suggest to you that if we were trying to start that business today, we would not have been able to finance it. Many of the people who looked at this business said to us: How are you doing this? This growth is phenomenal. How are you creating these jobs? We said we did it with internally generated cash. We didn't sell stock; we didn't go to the bank, although we had a credit line at the bank, of course. But we did it because we were able to save enough of the profit dollars we earned to pay for the growth of that business and create those jobs. You can never say anything with certainty with respect to hypotheticals, but it is my conviction that if we were starting that business today, facing an effective tax rate of 42 percent, we would not succeed. We could not afford to do it. Therefore, we would not have created the 4,000 jobs that exist now. The point I want to make with respect to the top marginal rate is that it does not just apply to the Michael Jordans and Donald Trumps of this world. That marginal rate applies to the entrepreneurs who are trying to do the same thing my associates and I were lucky enough to do--start a business, create jobs, add to the growth of this country, and discover as they go along that they need to hang on to every penny they earn to finance that growth, and every additional percentage point that we in the Congress put on the marginal rate hampers the opportunity of people to do that. Senator Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee, has offered the statistics of how many hundreds of thousands of small businesses trying to become big businesses are affected, how many hundreds of thousands of them, with their subsequent millions of employees, would be benefited by the kind of tax relief at the top brackets that President Bush is urging us to pass. We never hear that from the folks in the national media. Sometimes I wish that some of the people who are the talking heads on the shows on Sunday, who pontificate with such certainty about economic matters, might just take a few weeks off from their situation in front of the cameras and come out into the real world and try starting a business, try employing people, try creating jobs, and discover that life is a little different. Some in this Chamber have that experience. Comments were made by one of the more distinguished Members of this Chamber who ran for President in 1972--the Democratic nominee, Senator McGovern. He was firmly and solidly in the camp of those who insist that top marginal rates should be higher and higher and Government should regulate more and more. He tells the story of how, after his political career was over, he still had enough notoriety left over that he could give some speeches and earn some money for those. As he was paid honoraria for the speeches, he accumulated some money and he decided: Now is the time for me to relax a little. I will buy a business. He bought an inn in New England. Maybe he watched Bob Newhart's show and he thought that would be a nice thing for him to do--whatever. He has come back and said: If I had had the experience actually running a business in the real world before I became a Senator instead of afterwards, I would have been a very different kind of Senator. I would have had a very different view about regulations and taxes and the way the Government interferes with people's lives. This came from a man who at the time was labeled the most left of all of the Presidential nominees put up by either party in a generation. Coming back from the actual experience, he finds things are really different in the real world than they are on the Sunday talk shows, and sometimes as they are portrayed in the Senate. So while it may sound too personal for me to share this experience, I think it may have some value because we need to understand, as we are voting on this marginal tax rate, that we are talking about something far more than just the amount of taxes Michael Jordan or Donald Trump or Ross Perot may pay. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of businesses in this country that have been slowed in their growth, slowed in their ability to create jobs by seeing a jump in the effective rate go from 28 percent, which it was prior to 1991, to an effective rate of 42 percent now. And then people are beginning to wonder why there are some slowdowns in the economy. There is another point I want to make about this issue and the rhetoric that has gone around about it. We are told over and over again that the primary benefits go to the top 20 percent and the folks at the bottom 20 percent don't get anything out of this. That is terrible, we are told, and we must somehow find a way to use the Tax Code to take the money from the top 20 percent and make it available to the bottom 20 percent. There are several things that need to be said with respect to this argument. The first is the statistically obvious one. As long as you are dealing with 100 percent and dealing in percentages, you are dealing in what the mathematicians call a zero sum game; that is, you take a sum from this side, it must be added to that side, and everything in the end, one subtracted from the other, gives you zero, because everything equals. The economy is not a zero sum game. Neither is society. If you are talking about the top 20 percent, you will always have a top 20 percent. You can't have a 100-percent scale without statistically and mathematically having a top 20 percent. So the top 20 percent will never disappear. No matter how much you make an attempt to take money from the top 20 percent and put it in the bottom 20 percent, mathematically, somebody else will always show up in the top 20 percent. The second point, however, is the more important one, and that is, in America, more than in any other economy and any other society in the world, there is fluidity all up and down the economic scale. If I may be personal once again, let me demonstrate that. I have been in the bottom 20 percent. I am an entrepreneur. I start businesses. Most of the businesses I have started have failed. That is the way entrepreneurs live. I sat down when I got an award as entrepreneur of the year and said: Am I really? I did a little calculation, and up to that time I had been involved in 11 different businesses that would be considered startups or turnarounds, 11 different entrepreneurial activities. Of those 11, 4 failed outright--just flat died. Four we managed to sell before there was any profit or loss; we broke even and got out. Only three of those businesses survived. Of the three that survived, only two really were major successes. One of the three was a minor success that was on a plus, so I have to include it. So there is the track record: Out of 11, basically there are 2 success stories. While I was in one of the others that was not a success story, I was in the bottom 20 percent. Indeed, I was in the bottom of the bottom. I was getting no income. I was dipping into my savings, and when the savings were gone, I was going into debt. I was paying the payroll of the business on my American Express card, and then my American Express card got canceled because I hadn't made the payments on it. Statistically, I was in the bottom 20 percent. It was not 5 years after that somewhat dispiriting experience that I was in the top 20 percent. One of those entrepreneurial efforts hit, and when it hits, it hits rapidly, at least in my experience. I went through the bottom 20 percent, the next 20 percent, the next 20 percent, the next 20 percent, up to the top 20 percent pretty fast. Did I get from the bottom 20 percent to the top 20 percent because the Government took money from the top 20 percent and gave it to me while I was in the bottom 20 percent? No, I got there because the American economy makes it possible for entrepreneurs to have this kind of success story. Quite frankly, since I have been in the Senate, I have gotten out of the top 20 percent. I have started coming back down again. That sort of fluidity happens to us all the time. I have used the name of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been from the top to the bottom to the top again as his real estate ventures go good and go bad. The problem is not the statistical one of where people are at any one moment in time. I have six children. Right now some of them are doing pretty well. I have one child who, with her husband, probably is pretty close to the bottom 20 percent. He is not earning anything, and my daughter is supporting him. Gee, isn't that terrible, until you find out he is a student at the Harvard Law School and has pretty good prospects of good earnings once he gets out. He is going into debt now. He is in the bottom 20 percent, but when he gets his degree from the Harvard Law School, I believe he is going to be in fairly high demand with people dangling $125,000 a year starting salaries in front of him, and he will move very rapidly from one to the other. The problem we should be talking about is not the dry statistics of income, it is the reality of skills. The income gap in this country is not something that can be addressed with the Tax Code. The income gap in this country is a skill gap and has to be addressed through a series of educational initiatives, retraining initiatives, both government and private, and a recognition that the people who have the skills in the freedom of the American economic and environmental system have the opportunity to move up. But when they move up, they will always be replaced statistically with someone who is earning less than they are who ends up in the bottom 20 percent. Interestingly enough, when we had hearings before the Banking Committee on the issue of the Tax Code and tax relief, and Alan Greenspan was testifying before us, one of the members of the committee said to him: Mr. Chairman, with respect to the good economy we are enjoying, tell us who has benefited the most in terms of the economic strata of the United States, which group has gotten the greatest benefit out of this good economy? Knowing the political orientation of the Senator who asked the question, I think he was expecting and hoping that Alan Greenspan would say: Well, this economy has mainly benefited people at the top and the people at the bottom have not gotten anything out of it. I think the Senator was a little surprised when Alan Greenspan said: Without question, the people who have benefited the most from this good economy are the people at the bottom of the economic scale. Then he was asked how can that be because statistically the top 20 percent has gotten richer than the bottom 20 percent. But Alan Greenspan pointed out a great truth: It probably does not make any difference--I am not quoting him now; this is my summary--it probably does not make any difference whatsoever to Bill Gates whether his portfolio is $60 billion or $80 billion in terms of his lifestyle. He still has his big house at $60 billion. He still has all of his opportunities at $60 billion. His life has not changed at all if it goes from $60 billion to $80 billion. However, someone who cannot get a job, who suddenly finds that he or she can and become gainfully employed for the first time in his or her life sees an enormous change, and that, indeed, has been the primary impact of this good economy. It has virtually, at least for a period of time, eliminated unemployment. I can remember when we thought structural unemployment in this country was about 6 percent, and when we got down to 6 percent, we had functional full employment. We saw unemployment go down below 4 percent at times in the recent boom situation, and who got those jobs? People who were unqualified for the jobs that were available when unemployment was higher. I remember visiting with employers in my State and asking them: What is your biggest progress in this booming economy? They said: We cannot hang on to workers. We will take any warm body. We need workers. I said: Will you take the unskilled? They said: Absolutely, we will take the unskilled and we will spend the money training them; we will spend the money making them skilled because we have to have people. One employer said: We have a job fair opening where we rent a room and ask people to come in. They come in, we make a presentation to them. Say there are 30 or 40 people in the room. We make a presentation for an hour. We break for coffee and only 10 of them come back afterwards. All 40 of them are unemployed and want a job, but 30 of the 40 decided they did not like the way we made the presentation. And they can always walk down the street and get a job someplace else. That is the impact of a booming economy on the people at the bottom. It gives them an opportunity that will make a more dramatic change in their lives than the change in the lives of the people at the top. That is what Alan Greenspan was talking about when he said in terms of the impact for good on people's lives, there is no question whatsoever but that the booming economy we are having has affected for good more people at the bottom than it has people at the top. Yet from the rhetoric we hear around this Chamber, we are told over and over that if we do not somehow take money away from the people at the top and shift it to the people at the bottom, we are going to destroy American democracy. This class warfare kind of rhetoric simply does not jibe with reality. It does not jibe with what we have experienced in the last 10 years. It does not jibe with what the economists tell us is reality, and it certainly does not jibe with that which the small business man and small business woman will tell you in terms of actual job creation. Of course, the statistic we need to keep in mind is that the great job-creating machine in this country is not the Fortune 500. The great job-creating machine that is creating new jobs is not headed by Exxon, General Motors, Ford, and DuPont. No, the jobs are being created the way the jobs were created in the circumstance of which I was fortunate enough to be a part: A company started in a basement by a husband and a wife that within a decade has created 4,000 jobs, and in the process of creating those 4,000 direct jobs, among the suppliers, there are another 2,000 to 3,000 to 4,000 jobs as people are hired to produce the articles that our company has to buy in order to provide its product to its customers. As we wait for the report to come in from the conferees as to where they are going to put the marginal rate, I wanted to take the time to make it clear that the political rhetoric that flows around this issue really has little or no connection with reality. In reality, a lower marginal rate primarily helps small businesses to grow. A lower marginal rate is crucial to the rate by which small businesses grow. The rate at which small businesses grow is the most important dynamic in terms of how the economy is growing, and for those who get statistically hung up on the gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent, they must remember and recognize that in America, more than any other society in the world, the freedom to move both up and down the ladder is greater than anywhere else. If we can understand those things, we can come to a more intelligent decision with respect to where the marginal rate will be. I have no illusions that the conferees will bring the marginal rate in at the level that I would like, but I hope that once it comes in, in future Congresses we can keep all of this in mind and take another bite at the apple at some particular point. My desire would be to bring the top marginal rate back down to where it was during the decade of greed where, quite frankly, we sowed the seeds of the great economic expansion about which we are all excited and for which politicians of both parties have been taking credit when, in fact, they have had little or nothing to do with it. I think the work I did at the Franklin Company before I came here had more to do with creating jobs than anything I have done since I have been here. I want to get the marginal rate back down so others who are trying the same kinds of things we did will have the same opportunity that we did. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 12 noon on Monday, May 14. I further ask unanimous consent that on Monday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then begin a period of morning business with Senators speaking for up to 10 minutes each with the following exceptions: Senator Durbin or his designee, 12 noon to 1, and Senator Thomas or his designee, 1 to 2. Further, I ask unanimous consent that at 2 p.m. the Senate resume consideration of S. 1, the education bill, and Senator Reid be recognized in order to call up amendment No. 460.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 75 and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. For the information of all Senators, when the Senate convenes at 12 noon on Monday, there will be 2 hours of morning business. Following morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of the education bill and the Reid amendment No. 460. Under the order, if it is agreed to, there will be up to 1 hour of debate on the amendment which will then be laid aside. Also on Monday, Senator Cleland will be recognized at 4 p.m. to resume debate of his modified amendment No. 376. A vote in relation to the Reid amendment will begin at 5:30 p.m. and following that vote and some closing remarks, a vote is expected in relation to the Cleland amendment. Senators should therefore be on notice that at least the two votes will occur on Monday evening at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the instruction line of amendment No. 402 be modified to conform to the pending Jeffords substitute amendment. Amendment No. 402 was previously agreed to.