Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. When the Senate convenes at 9:30 a.m., the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 11:30 a.m. Following morning business, the Senate will resume debate on the conference report to accompany the legislative branch appropriations bill. Under the previous order, there are approximately 4 hours remaining for debate. Therefore, I expect that the vote will occur at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow on adoption of the conference report to accompany H.R. 4516. Following the 3:30 p.m. vote, it is hoped that the Senate can begin consideration of the Water Resources Development Act under a consent agreement. Therefore, Senators can expect votes throughout tomorrow afternoon's session of the Senate.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, September 20. I further ask consent that on Wednesday, 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 until 11:30 a.m., with Senators speaking for up to 5 minutes each, with the following exceptions: Senator Gramm of Texas for 30 minutes, Senator Graham of Florida for 10 minutes, Senator Sessions for 30 minutes, Senator Dorgan for 20 minutes, and Senator Durbin for 30 minutes.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have had brought to my attention since I finished my extemporaneous remarks some information about the funding of the Olympics that I would like to now share and put into the Record. This is a draft statement that was prepared for Mit Romney. I do not want to put these words in his mouth until he has had an opportunity to review it. It has come from his staff. I believe it is accurate. I will share some of this information with you. First, Federal spending for activities directly associated with the games is entirely appropriate when it is within traditional areas of public responsibility. Example: Two-thirds of the costs are for public safety activities, such as providing counterterrorism support. Other areas where the Government is involved include visas, customs, transportation to the public, and weather information infrastructure-- all traditional governmental responsibilities. The statement says the Olympic games are essentially a mission of peace entirely consistent with the objectives of our country and recognizing that the Government spends billions of dollars to maintain wartime capability, it is entirely appropriate to invest several hundred million to promote peace. That is an editorial comment. With respect to the funding and the GAO report, there are two types of unrelated spending combined under the term ``Federal funding.'' First is spending actually required to host an Olympic games; and, second, spending on projects the Government would have funded whether or not the Olympics occur. I have already talked at great length about the second aspect--funding that would have been spent regardless of whether or not the Olympics have occurred. Direct Olympics spending; that is, spending that occurs solely because of the Olympics, as accounted in GAO's report, is about $254 million, not the $1.3 billion that was in the headlines. I repeat that: About $254 million is the direct spending, and it goes for the items that are referred to up above--visas, customs, transportation, weather information and, of course, security and counterterrorism, as indicated by the $14.8 million to which the Senator from Arizona referred that was requested by the Secret Service. I add one other comment to this. The Senator from Arizona talked about future appropriations. We are pretty much over the hump with this year's appropriations. We cannot spend money in fiscal 2002 for Olympic games that are going to be held in February of 2002. So the 2001 fiscal year budget, which we are involved in here, is the big-ticket item. Once we are past this budget cycle, there will be some additional funds in the next year, but they will be much smaller than the funds that are included this year. I say to my colleagues, I know of no funds in the 2001 bills that are yet to come before us that have not, in fact, been authorized in the appropriate procedure to which the Senator from Arizona referred. So, Mr. President, I speculated as to what the number was in my extemporaneous remarks. I have now had the number given to me. The actual number of Olympics-only Federal spending is in the neighborhood of $250, $254 million. I make that additional correction to the Record. expansion of chicago high-density drug trafficking area

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

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I have nothing further to say. I probably should not have said as much as I did. If there is no Senator seeking recognition, I suggest the absence of a quorum and request that it be charged to both sides equally.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, if I may go back, the reaction out of Los Angeles caused the leaders of the Olympic movement to also get dollar signs in their eyes, and the Olympics began to expand. The assumption was, if the costs go up at the International Olympic Committee or the costs go up at the U.S. Olympic Committee, no problem; we will just sell a few more sponsorships and be able to pay for it without any difficulty. So one started chasing the other, and the number of sponsorships sold kept going higher and the costs kept going higher. One aspect of the cost going up has been the addition of new sports. Interestingly enough, the number of sports that will participate in the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 is significantly higher than the number that participated at Lillehammer in, I believe, 1994. In just that short period of time, the cost of putting on the Olympics has been expanded by a significant percentage--I do not have the number currently available--by adding additional sports. The organizers of the Salt Lake Olympic Committee have told me that even though their budget is very close to the budget at Lillehammer, their costs are substantially higher because of the additional sports that have been added. Somewhere along the line, someone lost track of what happens to all of this. Again, the head of the Salt Lake organizing committee, Mit Romney, has told me that the budget he was handed from the U.S. Olympic Committee implied more sponsorships for the winter Olympics than Atlanta had for the summer Olympics in 1996. He has to go out and sell those sponsorships now because the budget has built into the assumption that money will be there. He is still approximately $40 million or $50 million shy of being able to cover his budget even though he has outsold the sponsorships that went into Atlanta. He has more sponsorship money coming from Atlanta for the winter games, which are less popular than the summer games, and he is still money short. That is what has happened as everybody, reacting to what happened in Los Angeles in 1984, has assumed that the Olympics are a pot of gold. They are clearly not a pot of gold. And we are getting to the point where we may be back to the Los Angeles games when no city wanted to host it because they would end up with a major deficit. I said to Mit Romney: Will we have a deficit in Salt Lake? He said: No, we will not have a deficit because, if absolutely necessary, we will cut back to whatever amount of money we have. We don't want to have America host Olympics that seem to be second class by comparison to the rest of the world. But financially we have no choice if we can't close that gap. I believe Mit Romney will be able to close that gap. I believe he will be able to bring it down so that we will have an exact meeting of expenses and revenues. But in this whole picture comes the question that has been raised by the Senator from Arizona: What is the role of the Federal Government? Increasingly, the Federal Government plays an important role in the Olympics because, increasingly, as the Olympics get bigger and bigger, with more and more nations, more and more athletes, and more and more opportunities for international terrorism, they become a bigger and bigger problem for the Federal Government. I think the whole question raised by the Senator from Arizona and by the GAO report as to the formalization of the Federal role is a very legitimate question. I think the proposal in the GAO report that was endorsed by the Senator from Arizona that there be a formal involvement from OMB and a formal process within the Congress to track these appropriations is a right and proper proposal. We probably should have done it after the Atlanta Olympics when we had the first indication that this was what was going to happen. We didn't. I am perfectly willing to join with the Senator from Arizona to craft a way to do this once the Salt Lake City Olympics are over. If Washington, DC, or some other American city gets the Olympics at some point in the future, this process will be in place. I think it is the responsible thing to do. I applaud the Senator from Arizona in helping move in that direction. I point out, as the GAO report says, with respect to the $2 billion figure used by the Senator from Arizona: According to Federal officials, most of these funds would have been awarded to these cities or States even if they had not hosted the Olympic games although the funds could have been provided later if the games were not held. Let me talk specifically about the two largest items in that $2 billion figure that relate to Salt Lake City: the mass transit in downtown Salt Lake City and the renovation of I-15, the interstate highway that runs through Salt Lake City. Both projects were properly authorized, properly funded, under established congressional procedures with respect to transportation activities. I-15 was 10 years beyond its designed life when renovation construction began. The project was outlined for 9 years under standard construction procedures. The State of Utah, working with the Federal Highway Administration, came up with a method of doing it which is called design/build; that is, you design it while you are building it. Instead of designing it all first and then building it, you do it simultaneously. In the process, they cut the time from 9 years to 4\1/2\. They also cut the cost by close to $1 billion. Yes, it will be done in time for the Olympics. Yes, it will enhance the Olympics. And GAO has included its total in its calculation of the cost of the Olympics. But it had to be done. It was a logical expense of the highway trust fund. It was funded in the normal fashion through the highway trust fund, and because of the pressure the Olympics put on it in terms of time, we now have a pilot project with design/build that is coming in ahead of schedule and under budget. We are saving taxpayers money by virtue of the pressure that the Olympics put on this highway project. There is absolutely no question that the money would have been spent even if the Olympics had not come to Salt Lake City. It may not have been spent as wisely or as prudently as it is being spent if we had not had the pressure of the Olympics. The second issue is the mass transit system in Salt Lake City. The mass transit system in Salt Lake City, again, stood in queue with all of the other mass transit systems that were being reviewed by the Department of Transportation. It was approved in the Clinton administration as an appropriate transit program for a metropolitan area experiencing tremendous growth and congestion. It is interesting to me to note that the current construction of mass transit in Salt Lake City is going forward even though there was no assurance that it would be completed in time for the Olympic games. In other words, the Department of Transportation approved the full funding grant agreement for that spur of the mass transit system with the full knowledge that it might not be available for the Olympics. Now, the contractors who were building it insisted it would be available for the Olympics. It certainly will help the Olympics. But it was not approved as an Olympic project. It was not examined as an Olympics project. It was not evaluated by the Department of Transportation as an Olympics project. Its cost, however, is included in the GAO study as an Olympics project because it occurred in the period where things were being spent in Utah. I make a footnote with respect to I-15, the interstate highway. It is being funded largely by State funds. The Federal dollars only became available after TEA-21 passed in 1998 and the State decided we couldn't wait. Had we not had the Olympics and waited for full Federal participation in this portion of the interstate, the State of Utah would be paying less than it is now. So the State of Utah has put up a substantial sum of money by virtue of this for this infrastructure. We do not complain because we will have the benefit of that infrastructure after the games are over. However, I want to make it clear to any who are keeping score that if you take the $2 billion figure to which the Senator from Arizona referred that is part of the GAO report and break it down, you come up with a much smaller figure for the Federal participation in the Olympics games that has nothing to do with anything else; that is, you have a much smaller figure for Federal expenditures that are solely Olympics expenditures than anything like the $2 billion. Now, back to the earlier point, that we must address the question of the Federal role. Let us look what the Olympics do to any country that gets them in today's world. My wife and I went to Nagano, Japan, to see the Olympics put on in Japan. We read the Japanese newspapers. We didn't come up with a firm figure, but the Japanese newspapers speculated that the total amount that Japan as a country spent in order to put on the Olympics--the lowest figure I read was $13 billion; the highest figure I read was $18 billion, given the kind of accounting sleight of hand that accompanied the Japanese Olympics. I think the higher figure may very well be the accurate one. Even if we take the lower figure, Japan decided they could not put on an Olympics worthy of world attention without making such infrastructure improvements as to spend ultimately $13 billion. I participated in the benefits of that. I rode the bullet train from downtown Tokyo to Nagano where the Olympics were held. They decided they couldn't put on the Olympics without putting in a bullet train. We, in the United States, view the Olympics as basically a sporting event. The rest of the world views the Olympics very differently, and once a city in a country in the rest of the world is awarded the Olympics, the entire national government of that country becomes engaged. We need to think this one through as a nation. If we ever want to hold the Olympic games in the United States again and have the games be presented to the world on anything like the level that the world has come to expect for the Olympics, we are going to have to face the fact that the Federal Government must be involved in a formal kind of way. The GAO comments about this just growing upon us are correct and a formal examination of the American Federal Government participation in the Olympics is overdue. The fact is, now no city in this country can bid for, accept, and put on the Olympic games without significant, maybe even in the view of the Senator from Arizona, massive Federal support. The Clinton administration has recognized that. I have been a long critic of the Clinton administration in a number of areas, but in this area I must say that the Clinton administration has stepped up to the plate and supported absolutely everything that has to be done to see that the Olympics are put on in an appropriate way. I salute the people in the OMB with whom we have worked, the people in the White House staff with whom we have worked in a collaborative way to bring this all together to see that we will have a responsible Olympic games. The Olympic games in Salt Lake City in 2002 are going to be fabulous. We have the best mountains, the best snow, the best facilities. It is going to be a fabulous experience for the entire world, and all Americans are going to be very proud of the job that the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee will do in putting that on. But the Salt Lake organizing committee could not do it without the kind of support that has been provided by all of the Federal agencies who have been called upon in the various appropriations bills that have gone through. As we look to the future and anticipate the possibility that at some point some other American city will either gain the summer games, as Atlanta did, or the winter games, as Salt Lake City did, we should put in place the recommendations of the GAO and recognize right up front that it is a national effort, it is a Federal responsibility, as well as a city responsibility, and perform as every other country in the world performs with respect to this particular opportunity. If we decide as a Congress that we do not want Federal participation in the Olympic games, make that decision clear, then no American city will ever host the Olympic games again because no American city can ever afford the kinds of things that are required. I thank the Senator from Arizona for raising this issue, for bringing us to an understanding of the importance of the recommendations that the GAO has made, and for giving me the opportunity to give these specifics about the $2 billion figure. The Federal Government, in fact, will spend far less than that figure, far less than $1 billion, far less than however many hundreds of millions of dollars. I do not know the number. I do not know anybody who does. I will try to find it out and bring it to the floor at some point. It will be less than any other federal government has spent to bring the Olympics to their host country, but it demonstrates to us that we have to have the kind of planning and coordination for which the Senator from Arizona calls. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his indulgence. I ask how much time I have remaining.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator for his courtesy and friendship and the scholarship with which he addresses all of these issues. I understand the President pro tempore wishes to make a statement on the Boy Scouts first. I ask unanimous consent that following his statement I be recognized as in morning business for up to 10 minutes.

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

Mr. BENNETT. Thank you, Mr. President. (The remarks of Mr. Bennett are located in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I was wondering if I could make about 5 to 10 minutes' worth of statements on other issues relating to my home State.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise to address an issue that is of great concern to the people of my State, and, I think beyond the parochial issue, the people of the country as a whole. Private Fuels Storage is in the process of seeking a license to store nuclear waste on the Goshute Indian Reservation in the State of Utah. Their application seeks a 20-year license with the option of extending it for an additional 20 years. This is being described as an ``interim storage'' place for nuclear waste. I have been silent on this issue up until now. But I have decided to take the floor and announce my opposition to this storage for two reasons, which I will outline. One is something that requires further study and might be dealt with, but the second and more powerful reason for my opposition is a permanent policy issue. Let me address the perhaps less important issue first. But it is an important issue that requires consideration; that is, the location of this particular site with respect to the Utah Test and Training Range. One of the things most Americans don't realize is that we require the Air Force to train over land. There are very few training ranges that will allow aircraft to train over land. Much of the training that takes place in the Armed Forces takes place over the water, but it is not the right kind of training experience for pilots to always have to fly over water. The Utah Test and Training Range has a long history of service to our Nation's military. It was there that the pilots trained for the flights over Tokyo in the Second World War. Indeed, it was there that the crew of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was trained. The proposal for the storage site at the Goshute Indian Reservation is in a location that will affect the flight pattern of Air Force pilots flying over the Utah Test and Training Range. I have flown that pattern myself in a helicopter provided by the military, and I have seen firsthand how close it is to the proposed nuclear waste repository. There are people at the Pentagon who have said the flight path will not be affected; everything is fine. I have learned during the debate over the base realignment and closure activity that sometimes what is said out of the Pentagon is more politically correct than it is substantively correct. I have talked to the pilots at Hill Air Force Base who fly that pattern, and they have told me, free of any handlers from the Pentagon, that they are very nervous about having a nuclear waste repository below military airspace that will require them to maneuver in a way that might cause danger, and could certainly erode the level of the training that they can obtain at the Utah Test and Training Range. I do not think we should move ahead with certifying this particular location until there has been a complete and thorough study of the impact of this proposal on the Utah Test and Training Range and upon the Air Force's ability to test its pilots. That, as I say, is the first reason I rise to oppose this. But it is a reason that is subject to study, analysis, and examination, and may not be a permanent reason. The second reason I rise to oppose this is more important, in my view, than the first one. I want to deal with that at greater length. Let us look at the history of nuclear waste storage in the United States. The United States decided 18 years before a deadline in 1998 that the Department of Energy would, in 1998, take responsibility for the storage of nuclear waste. That means that through a number of administrations--Republican and Democrat--the Department of Energy has had 18 years to get ready to deal with this problem. Current estimates are that the Department of Energy is between 12 and 15 years away from having a permanent solution to this problem. I do not think that is an admirable record--to have had 18 years' notice, miss the deadline, and still be as much as 15 years away from it. The deadline is now 2 years past, and we are no closer to getting an intelligent long-term solution to this problem than we were. Perhaps that is not true. Perhaps we are closer in this sense: That a location has been identified. Up to $8 billion, or maybe even as much as $9 billion, has been spent on preparing that location as a permanent storage site for America's nuclear waste. We are no closer politically to being ready for that. We perhaps are a good bit closer in terms of the site. I am referring, of course, to the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, on the ground that was originally set aside and used as the Nevada Test Site. Many times people forget that. The Nevada Test Site is where we tested the bombs that were dropped elsewhere, and the bombs went into our nuclear stockpile. So the ground at the Nevada Test Site has already been subjected to nuclear exposure. The seismic studies have been done, and Yucca Mountain has been found to be the most logical place to put this material on a long-term basis. Twice while I have been in the Congress we have voted to move ahead on that, and twice the President has vetoed the bills. Against that background comes this proposal to build an interim storage site in the State of Utah on the reservation of the Goshute Indians adjacent to the Utah Test and Training Range. This is my reason for opposing that so-called interim site: I do not believe that it will be interim. I do not believe that. If we start shipping nuclear material to the Goshute Reservation in Utah, that gives the administration and other politicians the opportunity to continue to delay moving ahead on Yucca Mountain. Now, how much Federal money has been spent preparing the Goshute Indian Reservation to receive this? Virtually none, compared to the between $8 and $9 billion that has been spent on Yucca Mountain. There will be one delay after another if this thing starts in Utah. People will say: We don't need to move ahead on Yucca Mountain; we have a place we can put it in the interim. The interim will become a century, or two centuries, while the Government continues to dither on the issue of Yucca Mountain. I am in favor of nuclear power. I believe it is safe. I believe it is essential to our overall energy policy. I am in favor of the Energy Department's fulfilling the commitment that was made in 1980 that said by 1998 the Department of Energy will have a permanent storage facility. I believe we have identified that facility through sound science, through expenditure of Federal funds, through every kind of research that can be done, and we are ignoring, for whatever political reason, the opportunity to solve this problem at Yucca Mountain while we are talking about an interim solution at the Goshute Reservation. It is simply not a wise public policy to say that since we cannot solve the permanent problem, we will find a backdoor way for a stopgap interim solution. The stopgap interim solution will become a permanent solution without the plan, without the analysis, and without the expenditures that have already gone into the permanent solution that is available. Therefore, for these two reasons, I announce my opposition to the depository on the Goshute Reservation in Utah. I am sending a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission asking that they extend the time for another 120 days for public comment on their proposal to proceed with this license. I think the first reason that I have cited alone justifies that extension of time because there has not been sufficient analysis of the impact of this proposed facility on the Utah Test and Training Range. I hope in that 120-day period we can get that kind of analysis. The second more serious reason will still remain. I hope in that 120- day period we can begin to approach that, as well. I thank the Senators for their courtesy in allowing me to proceed on this issue. It relates directly to the State of Utah, but I think in terms of the impact on nuclear power as a whole, it is an issue about which the entire Nation should be concerned. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I wish to call to the attention of my colleagues an article that appeared on September 1 in the Washington Post, written by Charles Munger, who is the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, on the issue of the Microsoft litigation and the impact that will have in the marketplace. As I have considered this particular issue, as I pointed out to my colleagues, I come to the Senate unburdened with a legal education but with a background in business. Here is a businessman commenting on the implications of this litigation in a way that I think others might find interesting. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to one of my employees, Robert Cresanti, Robert has worked as my staff director on the Special Committee which addressed the Y2K problem which I chaired and has also served as a subcommittee staff director and counsel on the Banking Committee where I sit. Robert is a wonderful example of an outstanding man who has given much of his time and talents to the U.S. Senate and the American people. He has developed excellent skills in the legislative process and in the ways of Washington. I know he will be successful in his future endeavors. As he leaves the Senate to go into the private sector I express my great appreciation to him for his 8 years of loyal service and wish him the very best as he starts his new professional opportunity.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I recall a time very early in my career, not as a Senator but when I was involved here in Washington in support of a particular amendment that was being debated in the House of Representatives. I sat in the gallery in the House and listened to the debate and was somewhat startled when a Member of the House stood up and attacked the amendment as ``the General Motors amendment.'' He went on to thunder against big business in general, and General Motors specifically, and say: This amendment would take care of big business and it would hurt everybody else. After it was over--and I can report gratefully that our side prevailed in that particular debate--one of his colleagues went to this particular Member of the House and said: What are you talking about when you are attacking General Motors on this amendment? And the Member said: Well, when you don't have any substantive arguments, you are always safe in attacking General Motors. That comes to mind because, as we talk about today's energy crisis, and the rising price of energy at the pump, there are those who are attacking big oil. I think they are a little like that former Member of the House. When your arguments don't have any substance, attack big oil and hope that the public will respond. I want to talk today about why gasoline prices are so high and why a nameless political attack on big oil is not the answer. I do expect these attacks to continue. We are in an election year. There is at least one candidate for President who thinks, if he constantly attacks big oil, people will not pay attention to what is really going on. I want people to pay attention to what is really going on and focus on why we have energy problems in the United States. I start with a memo dated June 5 of this year, sent to the Secretary of Energy, through the Deputy Secretary, from Melanie Kenderdine, who is the Acting Director of the Office of Policy in that Department. She says a very startling thing. I must say, when I say startling, I am being sardonic about it. She says that it is due to high consumer demand and low inventories. What a great revelation--high demand and low supply is going to give us high energy prices. Of course it is. I have said many times, and repeat here today, that one of the things I think should be engraved in stone around here for all of us to see every day is the statement: You cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. We keep trying on this floor--we keep trying in the Government--to repeal the law of supply and demand and make prices and costs in the real economy respond to our legislative whims. But they do not. Prices respond to the law of supply and demand. So this internal memo, from the Department of Energy, is interesting in that it says the real problem is that ``high consumer demand and low inventories have caused higher prices for all gasoline types. . . .'' But then it goes on to say there are other things that have exacerbated the problem, made it worse. These things are, in fact, legislative, or, in this case, regulatory actions taken within the Clinton-Gore administration in response to the constituency that Vice President Gore seeks to cultivate as he pursues his Presidential campaign. It talks about, specifically: . . . an RFG formulation specific to the area that is more difficult to produce . . . The ``area'' we are talking about here is the Midwest. We are talking about Chicago. We are talking about the State of Michigan. We are talking about the Midwest, where gasoline prices are currently over $2 a gallon. These are regulatory actions--I will not read them all--that have been taken by the Clinton-Gore administration that have raised the price of gasoline simply by constricting further the supply. If we understand this, that we cannot repeal the law of supply and demand, if we understand that everything that has anything to do with constricting supply is going to drive up prices, we will begin to understand why we have runaway prices. What can we do to increase supply? That is the answer. You don't have to be a Ph.D. to understand that. You don't have to be smart enough to go on ``Who Wants to be a Millionaire'' and name all of the foreign heads of state if you want to understand this. You have to understand the very basic principle. If we are going to bring gasoline prices down, we are going to have to increase supply. As an aside, let me point out that this problem is not limited to gasoline prices alone. Americans are facing higher heating oil prices next winter. Americans are facing higher hot water prices from natural gas. For any source of energy, the price is going up. Why? Because the supply is not sufficient to meet the demand--economics 101. Let us look at the sources of supply in this country and what the Clinton administration--under the prodding of Vice President Gore who is acknowledged to be the leader on this whole subject within the administration--has done to supply. Let's start with oil. What has happened to the supply of oil in the United States? We find that 56 percent of our oil comes from foreign sources now, which is up from 35 percent, the level when we faced the oil crisis in the 1970s. If we are going to decrease this dependence on foreign oil, we ought to increase the amount of supply in the United States. It is very simple. If we have oil in the United States, let's start pumping that oil to increase the supply. What have we done since President Clinton has been in office? Under the prodding of Vice President Gore, when there was an opportunity to increase supply up in Alaska, this administration said, no, we will not allow you to do that. We passed legislation, both Houses of Congress, and sent it to the President, that would have increased supply, had more oil available in the United States. Under the prodding of Vice President Gore, the President said, no, we will not allow you to drill for oil in Alaska, even though there are indications there is as much oil up there as there is in Saudi Arabia, according to some reports. No, we will not allow you to increase that source of supply. There are other sources of supply domestically. What about the Outer Continental Shelf? President Clinton said, no, you can't drill anymore, no more exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf until 2012. Vice President Gore, in his campaign, has pledged to stretch this prohibition perpetually. President Clinton says, we will prohibit you from doing it until 2012. Vice President Gore says that is not good enough; we will prohibit you from going further. So they won't let us look for supply in Alaska. They won't let us look for supply on the Outer Continental Shelf. What about the Federal lands? Is there oil in the Federal lands? No, we won't let you drill. We won't let you explore in the Federal lands, even to find that out. So we are at the mercy of foreign sources of supply. This administration has determined to keep us at the mercy of foreign sources of supply when we are talking about oil. Now let's talk about natural gas. The geologists say the United States has an almost unlimited supply of natural gas. Maybe it is all right for us not to increase the supply of oil, even though that is what is driving up the cost of gasoline at the pump, if we can provide our energy through natural gas. Federal lands in the Rocky Mountain West, where I come from, contain up to 137 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. But this administration has put those lands off limits for exploration. We cannot even find out how much is there. No, Vice President Gore says, we can't look for natural gas on Federal lands. So what other sources of energy do we have? Well, one of the major sources of energy in my State is hydroelectric power coming from the Glen Canyon Dam. The Sierra Club has said: Let's tear down the Glen Canyon Dam. Let's take it down and eliminate that source of power supply altogether. The administration, to its credit, has said, no, we don't think that is such a good idea. But the Vice President, who has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, says he endorses their agenda, which raises the question, if he were to become President, would he in fact say, let us tear down the Glen Canyon Dam and thereby destroy that source of power? They have already suggested they want to study tearing down the dams on the lower Snake River, which produce hydroelectric power. Now, in this election season, we have a statement out of the administration and the Vice President that says: We will not take down these dams now. We will not take these dams down in the short term. We will study it. There are those who suggest that means we will wait until after the election, and then we will take down the dams. If, indeed, the dams are taken down, hydroelectric power goes away. Hydroelectric dams generate roughly 10 percent of this Nation's power. So we can't drill for oil, we can't explore for natural gas, and we want to dismantle some of the hydroelectric power. What about nuclear power? That is where most of the power comes from in Europe and in many other countries that don't have the hydroelectric facilities we do. On April 25 of this year, President Clinton vetoed legislation that would have allowed storage at Yucca Mountain of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is building up at every nuclear facility in the United States. At some point we have to deal with it. The Congress thought it had dealt with it by creating Yucca Mountain. The President said, no, even though we have spent billions and billions of dollars preparing Yucca Mountain to receive this nuclear waste, we won't let it go there, thus jeopardizing the opportunity for this country to have a long-standing, long-going nuclear program. All right. If we are not going to be able to handle nuclear power, if we can't drill for oil and oil power, if we can't explore for natural gas, and if we are trying to cut back on hydroelectric, where are we going to get the power? There are those who say, well, most of the power in this country comes from coal. Coal, of course, has a problem as far as the environment is concerned. I am proud to report that we have in the State of Utah some of the best low-sulfur coal in the world, which, if burned, would have an enormous benefit for the environment. Just 4 years ago, President Clinton, with Vice President Gore clearly identified as the driving force behind the decision, shut down the possibility of ever using any of that coal from Utah when he created the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, using the Antiquities Act in a way it was never anticipated to be used, violating all aspects of consultation as required under NEPA, refusing to even admit to elected officials in the affected State that he was even thinking about it. The President, with a stroke of a pen, said, you can't use any of that low-sulfur, good- burning coal. So you have to go to other kinds of coal. Fifty-five percent of our Nation's electricity is generated by coal, and 88 percent of the electricity in the Midwest comes from coal. But now they are saying we must put controls and restrictions on coal and the activity with respect to coal--to the point we have seen the senior Senator from West Virginia, who represents a number of coal producers, demonstrate his concern with this administration. So what is left, Mr. President? What is left to increase the supply? Well, you can't drill for oil. You can't explore for natural gas. You can't expand hydroelectric power. We hope to get that back. You can't use the coal. What is left? Prayer? I believe in prayer. But I also believe that the Lord prefers those who pray to him to do a little bit about it, to work at it. If I can go back again to the roots of my State, founded by the pioneers who came across the Plains, the story is told about a wagon train that got caught in a river. One of the leaders of the wagon train immediately dropped to his knees. The other fellow who was involved said, ``What are you doing?'' He said, ``I am praying.'' And the second man said, ``I said my prayers this morning. Get up and pull.'' I think if we are going to pray for divine assistance to help us increase the supply for energy in this country, we better get up and pull at the same time and recognize that saying no to the expansion of every single source of energy in this country in the name of appealing to an environmental community, as the Vice President has historically done, puts us in the position where we are going to have high energy prices for as far as the eye can see. I hope as people address the question of why gasoline is over $2 a gallon in the Midwest today--and those high prices are spreading--and as people address the question of why fuel oil will be twice as much in the winter than it has historically been, as people address the question of why the natural gas prices are continuing to go up, they will understand that, once again, we cannot repeal the law of supply and demand. If we want to bring energy prices under control in this country, we ought to help the President and the Vice President understand that truth and say the only solution to high prices, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, is increased supply for the demand that is built into our economy. As soon as they understand that and will work with this Congress to try to get increased supply in the various ways we have sent them legislation to do, we will then--and only then--begin to see these high prices come down.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont. I am looking forward to sharing some ice cream with him a little later today in response to his gracious invitation. I appreciate his courtesy.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. The Senator is correct. If I may make one other comment, the comment has been made that they want wind as the source. I have heard environmental groups have complained that they do not want windmills out on the prairies because they will damage the birds.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I appreciate the comments from the Senator from Rhode Island. I will have some responses to them in a moment.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 26, 2000, at 11 am to hold a business meeting (agenda attached).

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 26, 2000 at 10 a.m. for a hearing regarding S. 1801, the ``Public Interest Declassification Act.''

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Subcommittee on Public Health, be authorized to meet for a hearing on ``Health Disparities: Bridging the Gap'' during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 26, 2000, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet for a hearing on The Americans with Disabilities Act: Opening the Doors to the Workplace during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, July 26, 2000, at 2 p.m.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I will now turn to the subject that has been raised today and yesterday and last week and repeatedly in the last few weeks. That is the subject of why the Senate is not proceeding on the pace and with the vigor we all think it should. We have heard from the Senator from Rhode Island and others today about how the majority leader has somehow dictatorially brought everything to a terrible halt and wouldn't it be wonderful if we went back to the great spirit of cooperation and comity that allows us to get things done. I agree absolutely that it would be wonderful to return to the spirit of cooperation and comity that would allow things to be done, but I think it is pointing the finger in the wrong place to attack the majority leader. Let me share with you my experience this last week. Monday of this week was July 24, which in my home State is the biggest day of the year. July 24 happens to be the day that Brigham Young and the first group of Mormon pioneers entered Salt Lake Valley and put down roots that have now become not only Salt Lake Valley but the State of Utah. Every year we celebrate that historic event with a major parade. It is one of the requirements for a politician to be in that parade. Senator Hatch and I always confer about whether or not we will be able to make the parade because we don't want to miss votes. There have been times when we have had to miss the parade to be here to do our appropriate duty. On Friday of last week, I went to the staff of the leadership and said: What is going to happen on Monday? I was told: We will be on energy and water. There will be amendments and there will be votes. I then went to the subcommittee chairman of the Appropriations Committee and said to him--this being Senator Domenici--how important will the votes be and how many will there be? Senator Domenici said: Well, there will be several votes, but I think they will be relatively unimportant ones. They will not be close. I said: Well, Senator, I think under those circumstances, I will go to Utah and ride in the July 24 parade. If you can assure me that it will not create an undue hardship for you with respect to passing important amendments that my vote would not be absolutely essential, I think I will go to Utah. He told me: Senator, you can go to Utah. I will see to it that the amendments that we vote on on Monday will not be so close that your vote would have made that much of a difference. So I went to Utah. When I got back, I said to my staff: How many votes did I miss and how important were they? I found out I didn't miss any votes. The Senate didn't vote. Why? The Senate didn't take up the bill. Why? Because the minority objected to the motion to proceed, and the majority leader was required to file a cloture motion on the motion to proceed to consider the bill. I have made the statement in this Chamber before that based on my experience, I can remember a time when no one ever objected to a motion to proceed. A filibuster on the issue of the motion to proceed was something that was unheard of from either side. We have been told this afternoon ``couldn't we go back to the time when people got along with each other'' from the same side of the aisle that has said: We will filibuster the motion to proceed. So the majority leader had to file a cloture petition. He filed the cloture petition. We voted on it. When we voted on it, it was passed overwhelmingly, if not unanimously. That raises the question: Why did we go through this exercise? Why couldn't we have been on the bill at the time we were scheduled to be on the bill? Why are we in this situation now when we are under a cloture situation running off 30 hours on the clock so we can then finally get around to voting on the bill, knowing that as soon as we get through with this one, there will be another one where there will be objection to the motion to proceed, the requirement that a cloture petition be filed, and the running off the clock again? There are various ways to defeat legislation. One of them is to delay it. I said once before, I worry this Chamber has started to move from being the world's greatest deliberative body to being the world's greatest campaign forum. I am distressed by reports in the popular press that say that the Vice President and his party intend to run against a do-nothing Congress. We are doing everything we can to make this a do-something Congress, but there are forces at work to try to create the prophecy of a do-nothing Congress into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can be done in such a way that the public at large doesn't understand what is going on. The public at large doesn't know what cloture means. I go home to my constituents and I try to explain what is going on. They don't understand what the motion to proceed is. They don't understand the rules of the Senate. You talk to them about unanimous consent agreements that are not being agreed to, agreements that are made between the two leaders that then get set aside and cloture petitions, their eyes glaze over when you start talking like that. They come back to you--these are my constituents--and they say: Why aren't you getting your work done? When you have to make these kinds of explanations, the public gets impatient, which plays into the hands of those whose electoral strategy is run against a do-nothing Congress. I have started to use that language, as I explain to my constituents why we are not getting the people's work done. I say to them very deliberately--and it pains me because I do not want to cast clouds over this institution, but I believe I have to say it anyway--there are those who want to run against a do-nothing Congress who are determined to create a do-nothing Congress. And in the Senate, the rules are such that you can do that. The rules are such that even if you are in the minority, if you want to bring this place to its knees and bring it to a halt, you can do that. I have been in the minority. I have heard some of my fellow party members in the minority say: We have to bring this place to a halt; we have to shut it down. I am glad I didn't participate in the attempts on the part of the minority to shut this place down when George Mitchell was the majority leader; when George Mitchell did many of the things that Trent Lott is now being accused of doing; when George Mitchell said: We have to do the people's business, even if it means, as majority leader, I exercise something of an iron fist to make sure we do the people's business; I will do it and we will get the people's business done. Those on this side of the aisle who said in my hearing, ``let's shut this place down,'' did not prevail. I did not participate with them, and I am proud of that fact, that we did not attempt to shut this place down. Were we frustrated? Absolutely. Were we upset? Absolutely. Did we engage in filibusters, yes, straight up. My assigned time was from 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning in a filibuster, when George Mitchell said: If the Republicans are going to filibuster us, let's go around the clock. I was very up front about it. I believed the bill that we were talking about was sufficiently bad that I was willing to take my turn from 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning to see to it that the bill didn't pass. That is part of the game around here. That is the way the rules are structured. I have no problem with that. But objecting to the rule to proceed, which is the kind of thing the public doesn't understand, but that all of us understand, is a stealth filibuster. It is an attempt to slip under the public awareness, shut this place down, and create a situation where you can then run against a do-nothing Congress. I remember the first person to run against a do-nothing Congress-- Harry Truman. I remember what Harry Truman did. It was very different from what is being done here. Let's get a little history here. Harry Truman was President of the United States by virtue of Franklin Roosevelt's death. He had not run for President, he had not been elected, and he was not very popular in the country. The Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress as a result of Harry Truman's lack of popularity, and they were absolutely sure they were going to win the 1948 election. So they were determined they were not going to pass any legislation that Harry Truman could veto. They were going to wait until Thomas Dewey became President of the United States, and then they were going to pass their legislation for a President who would sign it. They held the Republican National Convention, and in the convention they outlined all of the things they were going to do, once they were in power, in both the Congress and the executive branch. Well, Harry Truman called their bluff. Harry Truman said: If that's what the Republicans really will do when they are in charge, let them do it now. He called the Congress back into session after the Republican convention and said to them: Here is your opportunity. Here is your platform. Pass your platform. Well, Robert Taft, who was the dominant Republican--the man whose picture graces the outer lobby here as one of the five greatest Senators who ever lived--made what I think was a miscalculation. He thought Harry Truman was so unpopular in the country at large that the Congress could thumb its nose at the President of the United States, and he said: We are not going to do anything in this special session that the President has called us into. We are not going to play his game. So the Republican Congress adjourned after that special session without having done anything--deliberately, without having done anything. Harry Truman then went out and ran against the do-nothing 80th Congress and got himself elected in his own right as President of the United States. It was one of the great political moves of this century. That is not what we are dealing with here. We are not dealing with a Republican Party that doesn't want to act. We are not dealing with a Republican Party that doesn't want to solve the people's problems. We are dealing with a Republican Party that is trying desperately to perform the one absolutely required constitutional function that the Congress has, which is to fund the Government. We are trying to pass appropriations bills to fund the Government, so that there will not be a Government shutdown, there will not be a continuing resolution, there will not be a crisis at the end of the fiscal year. When we try to move to the bills that will fund the Government, we run into procedural roadblocks on the part of those who are then talking about running against a do-nothing Congress. That is what is going on here. If we have to say it again and again and again, so that our constituents finally begin to understand it, I am willing to say it again and again and again. We have discovered that one of the strategies being played out in this great campaign forum is to take an amendment that is seen as a tough political vote, bring it up, see it defeated, and then the next week bring it up again, and then complain when the Republicans say we have already voted on that; we don't need to vote on it again. Oh, yes, you do, says the leadership on the other side; let's vote on it again. If we vote on it again and defeat it, thinking, OK, we have had a debate and we have taken our tough political votes and we have made it clear where we stand on this issue, let's move forward, no, we are told somehow when you want to move forward without bringing up this amendment again: You are thwarting the will of the Senate; you are turning the Senate into another version of the House of Representatives if you won't let us vote on this controversial amendment a third time. If it gets voted on a third time, then it comes up a fourth time. If it gets voted on a fourth time, it comes up a fifth time. Every time the majority leader says: We have done that, we have debated that, we have voted on that, he is told: No, if you take a position that prevents us from voting on it again, you are destroying the sanctity of this institution. Well, now we are being told we are interfering with the President's constitutional right to appoint judges. I find that very interesting because this Congress has confirmed more judges in an election year than previous Congresses. Quoting from my colleague, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and therefore in a position to have the statistics, there are fewer vacancies in the Federal judiciary now than when the Democrats controlled the Congress and the Republicans controlled the White House in an election year. If I may quote from Senator Hatch: Democrats contend that things were much better when they controlled the Senate. Much better for them, perhaps. It was certainly not better for many of the nominees of Presidents Reagan and Bush. At the end of the Bush administration, for example, the vacancy rate stood at nearly 12 percent. By contrast, as the Clinton administration draws to a close, the vacancy rate stands at just 7 percent. Well, turning it around, the vacancy rate we are facing now is roughly half that which a Democratic Senate gave to President Bush as he was facing reelection. Oh, but we are being told: No, there are judges who have languished for a long time; therefore, we should have a vote on the judges whose names have been before us the longest before we have a vote on the judges who may have been nominated more recently, and it is terrible to hold a judge or any nominee for a long period of time. We need to give him or her a vote. We need to bring the names to the floor of the Senate, and the minority leader should decide which name is brought to the floor of the Senate. I remember when I first came to this body, I was assigned to the Banking Committee. There was a nominee sent forward by President Clinton whom the chairman of the Banking Committee didn't like. The chairman of the Banking Committee at the time was, of course, a member of President Clinton's own party. But his objection, as I understood it--and I may be wrong--was that this particular nominee had too much Republican background on his resume, that this particular nominee had not been ideologically pure enough for the chairman of the Banking Committee. As I say, that is my memory, and I could be wrong. But that was the very strong position on the part of the chairman of the Banking Committee. That nominee didn't come up for a hearing before the Banking Committee for the entire 2 years that the Democrats controlled the Banking Committee and that man was the chairman. Any attempt on the part of anybody else to get that particular nomination moving was thwarted by the chairman. Now, what if the then-minority leader, Senator Dole, had come to the floor and said we will not allow anything to go forward until this nominee comes to the floor for a vote? How would people have reacted to that kind of action on the part of the minority leader if the entire minority had gathered around him, and said: We will stand with you, we will filibuster the motion to proceed, and we will do everything we can to bring the Senate to a complete halt until this nominee that has languished in the Banking Committee for almost 2 years is brought forward? I am pretty sure I know what George Mitchell would have told Bob Dole. I am pretty sure I know what the majority leader would have said under those circumstances. It probably would not be as mild as the comments Trent Lott is currently making about the present demands that are being made with respect to specific judges by name--not the agreement that the minority leader and the majority leader made where the majority leader said: All right, we will move forward on judges; we will bring a determined number of judges forward--but to say, no, we are now changing, and we are demanding a specific name be brought forward or we will shut the whole place down, and then come to the floor and say somehow the work of the people is not getting done. I am willing to take the tough votes that are being referred to on the floor. I have taken the votes on guns. I have taken the votes on abortion. I have taken the votes on minimum wage. I have taken the votes on Patients' Bill of Rights. I have taken the votes on prescription drugs for seniors. I have a record now that I will have to stand and defend before my constituents. Those votes have been taken because the minority has had the right to bring up every one of those issues and demand a rollcall vote. I don't apologize for the fact that I backed the majority leader in his position that we don't need to take those votes again. While we are in the process of trying to fund the Government and discharge our constitutional responsibility, we don't need to sidetrack that business to go over old ground. If there is an election that has come up so that there are new people here and the electoral balance has shifted, it obviously makes sense to take those votes against. But to have the same people in the same Chamber in the same Congress in the same session repeat the votes again and again and again doesn't make any sense when the process of debating each one of those votes again and again and again delays the whole legislative process to the point that we get to what I sadly have come to the conclusion is the goal here, which is to create a do-nothing Congress so that some people can run against a do- nothing Congress. If it means the majority leader has to get as tough as George Mitchell, if it means the majority leader has to be as firm as his predecessors, who were Democrats who were firm in order to move the people's business, I support the majority leader. It does not disgrace this body. It does not take this body away from its traditions. It is in the tradition of the body to move legislation forward and get the people's business done. I applaud Senator Lott for his courage and his leadership in moving us in that direction. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, the Senator has talked about the present situation we are in. Is the Senator aware that the majority leader tried to move the Senate toward consideration of this bill as long ago as last Friday and it was objected to by the minority?