Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to yield.

Mr. BENNETT. Certainly it would be a logical extension of the reasoning behind this. I agree with my friend from Kentucky that would be the case. My friend from Kentucky raises another issue with respect to the language of this amendment, when it refers to expenditures that may be made in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate. Let us suppose this circumstance, Madam President. Let us suppose that a corporation--we will call it the ABC Corporation so as to not taint any existing company--purchases half an hour of television time for a news broadcast; in other words, it becomes the sponsor of ``The McConnell-Bennett Hour,'' assuming for just a moment that both my friend from Kentucky and I have concluded our service in the Senate honorably and are looking to extend our careers in the public arena. And McConnell-Bennett, sponsored by the ABC Corp., has a half- hour news show. In that, McConnell proceeds to say nice things about the Senator from Texas, who has joined us on the floor. And the Senator from Texas has an opponent who immediately calls the network and says, by putting ``The McConnell-Bennett Hour'' on, the ABC Corp. has made an expenditure in support of the Senator from Texas. If the ABC Corp. would just pull their support and sponsorship of that program, McConnell would not have the opportunity to say all those nice things about Gramm. And Gramm's opponent says the expenditures made by the ABC Corp. in sponsoring that program are in violation of the Constitution. If this sounds somewhat silly, Madam President, it is because it is. I yield to my friend from Kentucky.

Mr. BENNETT. I think it would enhance the power of the press enormously, but I say this to my friend from Kentucky. If we had those kinds of limits, I think the people on the editorial page would begin to hear from the people on the business page, or, that is, on the management side of the paper, saying Congress has just prevented us from selling ads to anybody on any public issue--and there is very significant revenue connected with this--and we think you editorial writers ought to ease up to the point where we can begin to get some of the advertising dollars back that we used to have. In that circumstance, I agree with my friend from South Carolina, that as a practical matter in a campaign, this speech is not monetarily free. I draw a distinction between ``monetarily free'' and ``philosophically free.'' I believe when I buy an ad in a newspaper, as the purchaser of that space, I am, therefore, philosophically free to say whatever I want. Indeed, I have heard radio ads where, in advance of the ad, the radio commentator has come on and said, ``The ad you are about to hear contains language which this radio station is forbidden to broadcast under normal circumstances, but it is a political ad, and, therefore, the station cannot censor it in any way,'' and people are warned that the ad they are about to hear comes under the freedom of political candidates to say whatever they want. The ad then used words that, in fact, the station would never otherwise allow. I can say, the candidate who purchased the ad got about 2 percent of the vote, but he was out for the shock value, and he got it in the State of California. Then after the ad was run, the station announcer came back, once again, to disclaim any connection with this but to say we had no choice, since this was a political speech, to allow it to go forward untrammeled and unchanged. If you want free speech, the Senator from South Carolina is right, in today's world, you have to buy space on the media in order to have it, but if we put limits on the amount of money that can be spent, the net effect of that is to destroy my right to have free speech and to turn the debate over to the commentators who have access to the airwaves and the newsprint without any limitation.

Mr. BENNETT. I agree completely that the Congress might do that. Now, to be honest, I would have to say to my friend from Kentucky, the outcry that would arise from the press, the groups who watch what we do, would be very, very severe if Congress were to do that, and they would scream that that was not reasonable and would demand that the limit be raised. But you would create, in that circumstance, a political thicket, to use a phrase that the Supreme Court, I understand, has used on occasion, wherein the threads of intelligent debate would be lost completely. You would spend all of your time in that election arguing whether a $5,000 limit or a $10,000 limit or a $100,000 limit, or wherever it might be, was the right limit, and you would never spend your time talking about the important issues facing your country. Frankly, we are in a microcosm of that right now. We are arguing about the things that get in the way, I think, of more substantive issues.

Mr. BENNETT. As I read the language of this amendment, the determination of what is reasonable and what is not reasonable is left to the Congress. And under those circumstances, I can see a Congress of incumbents deciding that it was eminently reasonable not to allow anyone to oppose them. Indeed, if I may quote, to the Senator from Kentucky the rationale currently being given by the White House for the excesses to which they went in extracting expenditures which now have had to be returned in the millions of dollars. Their rationale was that they were facing the possibility that the Republicans would win the election, and that that possibility was so overwhelmingly devastating to the future of the country that they had no choice but to go to the absolute limits of propriety and, on occasion, beyond in order to prevent that from happening. If someone believes that is reasonable, certainly I agree with the implications of the question from the Senator from Kentucky that Members of Congress might agree that it is reasonable to put such low limits on the amount that could be spent in opposition to an incumbent that, in fact, the net result would be zero in support.

Mr. BENNETT. If I may, Madam President. I have just thought of an example that I think is a real-life example and not one of the theoretical examples we have been talking about. I hope I am not offending anyone to say that the new magazine called the Weekly Standard, in my opinion, is not making any money. I know enough about the business world to look at the number of ads in the Weekly Standard and know what it costs to produce the Weekly Standard to say that the Weekly Standard is at the moment a loser financially. I also know enough about the business world to know that Rupert Murdoch, who is funding the Weekly Standard, hopes that that will change. I know that he is not doing this strictly out of the goodness of his heart. And he has sound past history behind him. Sports Illustrated, published by Time magazine, did not make any money for years and years and years while it built a constituency for its product. It is now, I understand, the most profitable publication Time magazine has. Undoubtedly, Rupert Murdoch is hoping for a similar track record for the Weekly Standard. But as of now, the Weekly Standard is not making any money. Anyone who reads the editorials of the Weekly Standard knows that it is in support of candidates for nomination for office. And Rupert Murdoch is bankrolling it. He is bankrolling it with corporate funds. These are not his personal dollars. He is bankrolling that magazine with corporate funds. Suppose we pass this amendment and put limits on candidates to the point where they felt they could not get their message out, and a candidate then went, under cover of night, to Rupert Murdoch's office and said, ``Rupert, I am in terrible trouble. Will you please editorialize in the Weekly Standard on my behalf and reprint 400,000 copies and send them as promotional issues to every voter in my home State?''--a corporate contribution made in the name of seeking circulation improvement. It is not an unreasonable scenario. And the point that it illustrates is the point that the Senator from Kentucky has made since the day I walked in this Chamber and heard him address this issue. And that is this: Somehow, some way, somewhere the inventive American mind will find a way to spend money on political campaigns no matter what we do. Somehow, somewhere--I love his analogy: Like putting jello on a rock, the thing will find someplace else to go. It seems to me, if we want free, honest, open, fair, direct elections, we should focus on the issue of disclosure rather than limits, because the limits have proven time and again throughout our history never to work. We talk about how terrible this present situation is. Madam President, I lived through the Watergate era. Indeed, I lived through the Watergate era much closer to the Watergate scandal than I wanted to be. When I ran for the Senate in 1992, the entire campaign against me mounted by my Democratic opponent was that I was somehow tainted by my association with all of the figures in Watergate. And there are still occasions when I am in these parades on the Fourth of July in the rural towns of Utah where people who are not my political friends holler out, ``Hey, Watergate'' at me hoping the taint will still stick. Fred Thompson and I are probably the two Members of this body who know more about Watergate from a personal inside experience than anybody. Virtually the entire system that we have right now was constructed in response to Watergate. And we were promised at the time it was constructed in a way that it would solve all of our problems. We were promised that with the creation of political action committees, special interest money would disappear. We were promised that with limitations on individuals, we would get democracy like we have never seen it before in campaigns. We were promised that everything would go away if we would just simply adopt these reforms in the name of clean elections. Twenty years later, what do we hear? From the same people who made those promises, we are told if we adopt this constitutional amendment all will be wonderful, everything will now suddenly take on a rosy hue and there will be no corruption in American politics again. Madam President, I did not believe them then. And I do not believe them now. And I think the track record of the last 20 years indicates that I was right not to believe them then. I hope we do not have a track record for any of us to find out from actual experience that we should believe them now. Let me conclude with a personal experience. Everybody always says, no, you should not tell your personal stories. But this is a story I know the best. I looked at all of the proposals for campaign reform that were around when I ran. And I realized very quickly they were designed for one purpose--to protect incumbents. Of course, you want to have a spending limit if you are an incumbent. The challenger cannot take you on if there is a spending limit. I ran against an incumbent Congressman. What did that mean? That meant when he put out a press release, the taxpayers paid for it because he had a press Secretary that was on his congressional staff. When I put out a press release, I had to pay somebody out of campaign funds in order to write it and disseminate it. When he went to see someone in the home State after traveling to Washington, the taxpayers paid for it because he had a travel allowance. When I came to Washington to try to see somebody to raise some money for myself, I had to pay for it myself out of my campaign funds because I did not have any travel allowance. And so on down the list. Plus the fact, he had all those years of being invited to Rotary clubs and Kiwanis clubs and Lions clubs to be the speaker. I have been involved with trying to line up speakers for clubs. You are always delighted when you can get someone like a Congressman to come talk to you. I had not been to any of those clubs. None of them was interested in talking to me. So you know what I had to do, Madam President, in order to get anybody to listen to me in that campaign? I had to buy them lunch. When I filed my FEC report, I had $86,000 for food. Because the only way I could get anybody to listen to me: I bought them lunch, I bought them breakfast, I bought them dinner. They would come with no intention of voting for me, but they wanted the free meal. I just hoped if I could get in the room long enough and talk to them, maybe I could pry a few of them away. I started out in that first campaign for the Republican nomination, and there were four of us running for the Republican nomination. One candidate was at 56 percent, in first place. I was at 3 percent, in fourth place, and there was a 4-point margin of error, so I could possibly have been minus 1. Would the incumbents have loved a spending limit faced with the opportunity that Bob Bennett might challenge him? Absolutely, absolutely. And a spending limit would be marvelous because then I could not spend all that money for lunch because I simply could not have done it. Now, I have said facetiously to some of my Republican friends around here, look, we were opposed to this when we were in the minority. Now that we are in the majority, why are we not for it, because it will return our incumbents and hold the other side down, because their challengers cannot beat us. I am afraid I am not that cynical. I still remember what it is like to be a challenger and the recognition that if we are going to have free and open elections, we have to give the challengers the opportunities to take on the incumbents, and the opportunities to take on the incumbents on the part of the challenger means that the challengers have to have the opportunity to raise the money to pay for the press secretary that the taxpayer pays for for the incumbents, to pay for the travel budget that the taxpayer pays for for the incumbents, to pay for the lunches so they can get in before the audience, that the incumbents get for free. If we put this limit on and say we are going to hold everybody to the same limit, we have just automatically said we are going to take care of the incumbents. The only thing that makes any sense to me in terms of campaign finance reform is to increase the level of disclosure, not put any limits, recognizing the reality of what the Senator from Kentucky says, that the money will find a way to be spent. The more limits you put on it, the more you make sure it is the rascals who survive and the naive who get caught. The only way you will get the naive, the fellow who has not figured out all of the ins and outs, who has not worked his way through all of the labyrinth and opportunity to serve in public office is to remove the ins and outs and wipe away the labyrinth. I am sure we will have more to say on this as it goes on. I see my friend from Texas has something to say, as he always does. I will listen with interest, as I always do. I will leave it at this, Mr. President, but I will return at some future point. I end this as I began. Patrick Henry was right when he said, you nail it down, you put it on paper, and you make it very clear. James Madison was right when he caved in to Patrick Henry on that argument, and did it in writing, the Bill of Rights, instead of accepting the assurances that everything would be OK. I cannot accept the assurance that Congress will automatically come up with what is the right definition of reasonable. I cannot accept the assurance that expenditures made in support of or opposition to a candidate will be reasonably handled by the Congress. I cannot support putting that kind of language into the Constitution of the United States and thereby creating a circumstance of uncertainty over which lawyers will argue for the next 200 years. I was part of the majority that defeated this amendment the last time it came up. I will be part of what I hope will be the majority that defeats it this time. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, when I came here as a freshman, I remember the first parliamentary situation I got snarled up in, and the man who stepped up to help me unsnarl it and begin to understand the way the Senate worked was the senior Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Ford]. He sits on the other side of the center aisle from the side I sit on. We have not cast very many votes in the same way. But he has been an unfailing source of good humor and good fellowship, and he has become a close friend. I remember, as I contemplate this occasion, one night when I was called upon for late service in the Chair. As things happened that night, the two leaders, for one reason or another, could not seem to get together, and the hour went on and on and on, and they could not call anybody to relieve me in the Chair. I was there until almost midnight. Absolutely nothing was happening on the floor; indeed, nobody was on the floor--except the Senator from Kentucky, who had duty himself that night on behalf of his party. I remember asking him, as a freshman seeking wisdom, as I was looking up in the gallery, ``Why are they here at 11 o'clock at night or 11:30 at night, with nothing going on?'' They sat there patiently in the gallery. Senator Ford said, ``Because the zoo is closed.'' He has been a delight to be around. I serve now on a task force with him, and I appreciate his candor, his directness, his clear honesty, and his great respect for this institution. This is the kind of Senator we need in terms of this respect. There are many who come here who do not recognize the great honor it is to be here and sometimes bring a degree of dishonor to this body and the work it does on behalf of the people. Senator Ford is not in that category. He is in the other category of those who will be missed on both sides of the aisle, a good friend whom we shall look forward to seeing for many years to come even after his service here has ended because we find him such good company and such a fine, fine friend. Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. BENNETT

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

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, during this debate, we have heard time and again from some of the opponents to the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that we are getting toward balance without a constitutional amendment. The President has proposed a balanced budget by the year 2002. The Republicans have called for a balanced budget by the year 2002. Why do we need a constitutional amendment when we have the result before us? I wish to point out that we do not have this result before us. We have the same kind of rhetoric about the balanced budget that we have had for years and years. I will focus primarily upon the President's proposal for a balanced budget by 2002 and express why I do not believe that it will achieve that result and why we need the discipline and the balanced budget amendment in the Constitution to get that result. We are not getting it now. If I may, Mr. President, I will show some charts. Here are the levels of deficits outlined in the President's budget. If you look at that chart all by itself, it looks fine. It shows a downward trend. What it does not show is that, in the first year of the President's budget, in 1997, he calls for the deficit at $125 billion, up sharply from fiscal year 1996. So if we are going to have a balanced budget, we start by increasing spending from last year to this year, we start by going from $106 billion, up to a deficit of $125 billion. We stay in that neighborhood through 1998. We stay in that neighborhood in 1999. We don't start coming back to the level of where we are today, at $106 billion, until the year 2000, and we do not see a significant reduction in the deficit from its present level until the year 2001. Now, there will be cynics among us who will say that it's not a coincidence that the year 2001, which is the first real year of reduction from where we are now, happens to be the first year that Bill Clinton will be out of office, and the deficit reduction will come only under his successor and successive Congresses. We have seen examples of how serious the President is about these outyear budgets. Outyears, Mr. President, is a term that we in Washington use for the future. Folks back home don't understand the term ``outyears,'' and so maybe they don't understand what we mean when we say this problem will come in the outyears, or we will get it solved in the outyears. What they really mean is we will deal with that tomorrow. I have said on this floor before that I am afraid when it comes to budget matters, the theme song for this administration comes from the musical Annie: ``Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow, you're always a day away.'' That is what we see here in this deficit level proposed under the President's budget. It will come tomorrow. It will come after the President has left office. It will be future Congresses that will have to deal with that. Now, I sit on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. President. As a member of that committee, I see the budget requests that come from members of the executive branch. Last year, I sat on the subcommittee chaired by the Senator from Missouri, Senator Bond, and we had coming before us on that subcommittee a number of agencies that talked about their budgets. One of them was the Veterans' Administration. I have here what Secretary Brown of the Veterans' Administration had to say formally and on the record with respect to his budget. Senator Bond, the chairman of the subcommittee, questioned him about the drastic cuts in the outyears, and asked the question: ``What is going to happen when you have to make these drastic cuts?'' We got an answer from Secretary Brown that says, ``I am not going to have to make those cuts. The President has assured me that I will not.'' Reading along, Senator Bond said, ``So you are saying that these outyears mean nothing. It is all going to be negotiated in the future. So we should not worry about the President's budget plan. He does not intend to hold you to those significant decreases in spending. This 7- year budget plan is a sham. It has no substance is what you are saying. You are not planning to live with that budget.'' That is the statement from the chairman of the subcommittee. This is the response from the Cabinet-level officer in the President's administration to that statement. He says, ``I am not planning to live with it. I am not planning to live with your budget * * * nor am I planning to live with the President's line.'' If the Cabinet officers are not planning to live with the budgets laid down by the President, what credibility should the Congress give to the budget laid down by the President? The Secretary said--lest we think the Secretary is speaking on his own, I am quoting from his testimony--the Secretary said, ``The President understands that. I talked with him personally about it, and that is one of the reasons why he gave me his personal commitment that he was going to make sure that the Nation honors its commitments to veterans and that he will negotiate the budget each and every year. So the main point that is realistic up there is the President's 1996 budget and his 1996 budget request. We all know what is going to happen to that, but the outyears and the tough decisions will be made each and every year.'' He said on the record to the Appropriations Committee of this Congress that the only number he was willing to live with was the President's number in 1996 and the rest of it would be left to the future. If I may, tomorrow we will deal with that. Tomorrow, and tomorrow is always the day away. Lest you think this was an isolated incident, I take you to another hearing that occurred in that same subcommittee on which I sat. This has to do with NASA. I am a great supporter of NASA. I believe we get our money back tenfold that we spend in NASA in terms of the technology spinoff that takes place, the jobs that are created. I think NASA is a place where we should continue to spend money. It is the same thing. NASA was going to have a nice budget for the near term, the present budget, and then there would be drastic cuts in the outyears. Senator Bond said to Dr. Goldin, Administrator of NASA, ``Now, I understand you have been told that the numbers should be expected to change for the outyears, so there is no need to defend any specific funding level in his budget, nor any likely programmatic consequence of such funding levels. Is that your understanding?'' Dr. Goldin, Presidential appointee, Administrator of NASA, said, ``Yes, and based upon assurances I have had by discussions with the administration, I expect that as the clarity comes into focus, the outyear budgets will change.'' We all know which way they will change. They will go up. As I say, I am delighted by that because I am a strong supporter of NASA. But I am not delighted by the sleight of hand that occurs in the overall budget figures which we saw in the first chart where the President says, overall, yes, we can continue spending at a level higher than we are spending today for all of the years that I am in office and then we will project that the savings will come. This is what we are being told is the budget. This budget proves that we do need a budget amendment. This budget shows we do need the discipline which would come from writing something into the Constitution. Mr. President, I have one other chart that I want to share with you and others who may be watching which puts this whole debate into a different perspective. I have used this chart on the floor before. It is a slightly different chart than many we have seen. This is not a chart of the debt in absolute terms. This is a chart of the debt in relative terms. Frankly, to me, as a former businessman, the relative terms make more sense. If you take the debt as an absolute number and do not have anything to compare it to, it frankly doesn't mean much. I have used this analogy on the floor before. But I have learned since I have been in the Senate that there is no such thing as repetition. So I can use it again with a perfectly clear conscience. Taking a business with which I was involved before I came to the Senate, when I went to work for this business as its chief executive officer it had debt of $75,000. That debt, given the size of the company, was sufficient to sink the company. They were doing a total of $250,000 in business, a total volume $250,000 a year, and they owed $75,000 in debt. They were in serious trouble. There was no way they could pay that debt off with $250,000 in total volume because their margin on that total volume that they could keep after they bought the raw materials for their product was relatively small. They were in deep trouble at $75,000 in debt. When I left the company prior to my run for the Senate, that company had $7.5 million in debt. And if all you looked at was a chart that showed $75,000 to $7.5 million, you would say this company is clearly going broke, and what terrible stewardship Mr. Bennett provided as the chief executive officer of the company if he allowed the debt to rise from only $75,000 to $7.5 million in only 6 years. When we had $7.5 million in debt, the company was doing $80 million in annual revenue and we happened to have about $20 million in cash. You say, ``Well, why would you have any debt if you had $20 million in cash?'' It was left over from the period of time when we had to mortgage some of the buildings in order to get some built and there were prepayment penalties on the mortgages. So it made more sense to the shareholders for us to keep the cash than to pay the prepayment penalties on the mortgages. So the size of the debt frankly was not the key issue. The question was, how big a debt do you have compared to the financial strength of the company? And $7.5 million in debt compared to the financial strength of the company when I left it was frankly nothing at all to be concerned about, whereas the $75,000 in debt when I began there was threatening to destroy the company. So I have taken the national debt and expressed it not in absolute terms, not in the debt where it was in this year and how rapidly it has risen to where it is now, but as a percentage of the economy, gross domestic product, the total production of goods and services in a year. And you will see that the greatest time of debt in the history of this country as a percentage of gross domestic product, or GDP as we abbreviated it, was at the height of the Second World War. This is 1945. Our debt stood at 130 percent of our total year's output of goods and services. Now, you will notice that at the end of the war the debt as a percentage of GDP started falling and kept falling fairly dramatically, and kept falling and kept falling and it bottomed out in the mid- 1970's. It got down to about 30 percent of GDP, from 130 down to 30, and then something started to happen. And then something started to happen. It started to happen before Ronald Reagan became President. It started to happen before the defense buildup under Caspar Weinberger. It started to happen before the tax cuts that were passed by this Republican Senate in the early 1980's. The debt started during the Jimmy Carter years, and it started back up. And for the first time in our history we saw the debt increasing as a percentage of GDP during peacetime. Prior to that, the debt always came down during peacetime, and only went up during wartime, as a percentage of GDP. What happened? Was it Jimmy Carter's fault? Was it the Republican Congress' fault? Frankly, it was the kicking in of the automatic increases of entitlements in an aging population that started the debt to increase as a percentage of the gross domestic product. No politician was responsible for it, and no politician can take credit for having solved it until we muster the courage and the strength on this floor to address the issue of the automatic nature of entitlement increases. We have been unable to do that. We have talked about it, but we have been unable to muster the necessary political courage. We meet in the cloakrooms, we meet in the dining room where we talk to each other, and we tell each other this is what we have to do, and then we do not muster the majorities to do it. There is one way to make sure we will muster the majorities to do it and start this back down, which is where it needs to be moving. The way to do that is to write into the Constitution, the basic document that governs all of our activities, the requirement that we balance the budget, and have no deficit. As the economy grows, even if the debt stays exactly where it is, it will diminish as a percentage of GDP as it did in the 30 years between the end of the Second World War and the time when it started back up. We can go back to that downward trend if we just keep the debt where it is. And the only way we keep the debt where it is is to balance outlays with income every year. I say the time has come to put the requirement that we do that into our basic document, the Constitution, at which point we will then have a balanced budget. Mr. President, there are many other things I could say about all of the debate that has gone on on this floor. Frankly, much of what I have heard in the debate on this floor I think is irrelevant to the core issue. I can comment on the various amendments to the balanced budget amendment that have been raised. I will not because these issues have been dealt with by my colleagues in great depth, and I see no point in repeating all of that. I am a reluctant convert to the idea of a balanced budget amendment. I have made that point clear before. I do not like amending the Constitution. I have voted against amendments to the Constitution that many of my colleagues thought were meritorious simply because I think the Constitution is so significant a basic document that we should exhaust every other remedy before we consider amending it. It is with great reluctance that I make an exception to that position with respect to the question of the balanced budget. If we do not have the discipline written into our basic document dealing with this issue, our past history shows that we cannot control the impact of the entitlement increase on future generations. So for that reason, I announce, with all my misgivings about amending the Constitution, that in this case the issue is so important, the challenge is so significant that an amendment to the Constitution is called for. That is why I intend to vote for the amendment that is before us, why I have voted and will continue to vote against any crippling amendments to that amendment and hope that the rest of the Senate and ultimately the rest of the country will come to realize that the only way to start these yellow lines going back down again in a significant, historic trend is to write a basic requirement into the Constitution of the United States. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, in the last Congress, by coincidence, on my birthday, President Clinton announced the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, taking 1.7 million acres in the State of Utah and creating a national monument under the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906. This, frankly, caught a number of us by complete surprise --well, maybe not complete surprise, because we had seen reports in the newspaper that this might be coming. But whenever we spoke to anybody in the administration about it, we were constantly told that no decision has been made. Congressman Orton, the Democratic Congressman in the district in which this land was located, was told ``nothing is imminent.'' Even 24 hours before the announcement was made, people in the White House were insisting that nothing was coming down on this particular subject. And then, as I say, on the morning of my birthday, I received a phone call from Leon Panetta, not to wish me happy birthday, but to inform me that the President would indeed be creating a new national monument in Utah under his authority as outlined in the Antiquities Act. The process by which the monument was put together was entirely closed to any elected official. No one from the State of Utah who holds elected office--not the Governor, neither of the Members of this body, not the Members of the other body, no one--was allowed to make comments or be involved in the process of creating the monument. We now know, however, from press reports that members of what is called the environmental community were involved in writing this proclamation. They had access to the White House, to the Department of Interior, and to administration officials that the rest of us were denied. Out of this closed process came the national monument and, with it, frankly, Mr. President, considerable antagonism and disappointment on the part of many people in Utah--if polls can be believed, a large majority of the people of Utah--at the way they were treated in this matter. ``Not to worry,'' we were assured by the President at the Grand Canyon. And I was assured personally on the phone by Leon Panetta that there would be protections of the rights of ordinary citizens written into the pattern of the way this monument would be managed. Mr. Panetta outlined those to me, and I wrote them down. Then, when the President appeared on national television, I followed my list and saw that the President was going down the same list. That is, he made exactly the same promises that Mr. Panetta had made as to the way things would be handled in the monument. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill. It will be known as the Grand Staircase-Escalante Resource Protection Act. Its sole purpose is to codify the promises the President made when he created the monument. I said to my staff, ``Do not put everything in this bill you think we must have. Just make sure the act is entirely just what the President promised he would do.'' Let me give you some examples of what I mean. On this chart we have the President's statement made on September 18 when he said: ``Families will be able to use this canyon as they always have. The land will remain open for multiple uses, including hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and grazing.'' Many of the people who have reacted to the creation of the monument have made it clear that there should never be multiple uses on this land. They say that this would be incompatible with its designation as ``wilderness.'' But the President did not designate the land as wilderness. He designated it as a national monument, and he specifically promised--these are his words--that ``The land will remain open for multiple use . . .'' This was taken off the transcript that was available to us the day the President made his statement. Another promise the President made is on this chart. It is a little bit longer, but to the people in Utah it may be even more important. He said, ``Mining revenues from Federal and State land help to support your schools.'' He was speaking to the people of Utah. I know the children of Utah have a big stake in school lands located within the boundaries of the monument that I am designating today . . . creating this national monument should not and will not come at the expense of Utah's children. That is a very important commitment made by the President. It has to do with the fact that almost 200,000 acres in this monument are owned by a trust that administers these lands for the benefit of Utah's schoolchildren. Under the monument designation, conceivably the trust would lose that ownership unless there can be a pattern of swapping out school acres for other acres outside the boundaries of the monument. These are a few of the President's promises. There was another one which I do not have on the chart but that struck me personally. The President said, ``We will appoint an exchange working group, including Congressman Orton and the two Senators as well as the Governor and others, that will examine this issue of school trust land.'' It has now been 6 months since the President made that statement, and no such group has been proposed by anybody. It has been 6 months since the President made that proclamation, and we don't see any indication that he intends to instruct people to follow through on the promise that the people will be able to use the canyon as they always have. And we see no indication that the people in the administration are taking any steps to make Utah's schoolchildren whole for the income that they will lose as a result of the creation of this monument. If I were to pick up the phone and call the White House today and ask for Leon Panetta to remind him of the pledge he made to me, I would be told, ``Mr. Panetta doesn't work here anymore.'' So I have decided to take the promises that the President made in this speech, which was before the entire country on national television, and write those promises into law. Many people have said, ``Oh, you are going to do terrible things if you write those into law. You are going to undo every protection that is important to this monument.'' To them I say, if you do not like these promises, argue with William Jefferson Clinton. Don't argue with me because they were his pledges; not mine. Some groups have seized on some language that I have in the bill describing what will be permitted in the monument and say, ``You go far beyond the President in the things you allow. Where did you get the idea that mining and timber and those kinds of things should be allowed?'' My answer is, I took the definition of ``multiple use'' that is in the FLPMA handbook produced by the Department of the Interior and reproduced it, neither subtracting nor adding anything. I made no attempt to put my judgment as to what ``multiple use'' means. I used the manual that is produced by the Department of the Interior to define what ``multiple use'' means. By virtue of the introduction of this bill, we will now have hearings. There will be hearings both in the House and the Senate. I am told that a companion bill will be introduced on the other side of the Capitol. I myself point out that these hearings are open, unlike the process the President followed, which was closed. These hearings will allow those who disagree with me--and I heard from some people this afternoon who disagreed with me quite vehemently--an opportunity to come before the Congress and tell the Congress what they think the President meant when he used these words. These hearings will give the Department of the Interior the opportunity to come before the Congress and tell the Congress what they think the President meant when he used these words. If they can make a plausible case to the Congress, I am perfectly willing to amend the bill and accept changes. The thing I am not willing to do is to accept, as some have said, that ``This was merely a campaign speech. The President should not be held to honor any commitment he made in that speech because it was in the heat of the campaign.'' We are talking, Mr. President, about 1.7 million acres of land in my State. That is a land mass bigger than some of the States represented by Senators who sit here in this Chamber. We are talking about a major action that impacts the future of the people of southern Utah. That being the case, we must codify what the President said so that these commitments are kept whether they were made in a campaign speech or not. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, in the last Congress, by coincidence, on my birthday, President Clinton announced the creation of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, taking 1.7 million acres in the State of Utah and creating a national monument under the authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906. This, frankly, caught a number of us by complete surprise --well, maybe not complete surprise, because we had seen reports in the newspaper that this might be coming. But whenever we spoke to anybody in the administration about it, we were constantly told that no decision has been made. Congressman Orton, the Democratic Congressman in the district in which this land was located, was told ``nothing is imminent.'' Even 24 hours before the announcement was made, people in the White House were insisting that nothing was coming down on this particular subject. And then, as I say, on the morning of my birthday, I received a phone call from Leon Panetta, not to wish me happy birthday, but to inform me that the President would indeed be creating a new national monument in Utah under his authority as outlined in the Antiquities Act. The process by which the monument was put together was entirely closed to any elected official. No one from the State of Utah who holds elected office--not the Governor, neither of the Members of this body, not the Members of the other body, no one--was allowed to make comments or be involved in the process of creating the monument. We now know, however, from press reports that members of what is called the environmental community were involved in writing this proclamation. They had access to the White House, to the Department of Interior, and to administration officials that the rest of us were denied. Out of this closed process came the national monument and, with it, frankly, Mr. President, considerable antagonism and disappointment on the part of many people in Utah--if polls can be believed, a large majority of the people of Utah--at the way they were treated in this matter. ``Not to worry,'' we were assured by the President at the Grand Canyon. And I was assured personally on the phone by Leon Panetta that there would be protections of the rights of ordinary citizens written into the pattern of the way this monument would be managed. Mr. Panetta outlined those to me, and I wrote them down. Then, when the President appeared on national television, I followed my list and saw that the President was going down the same list. That is, he made exactly the same promises that Mr. Panetta had made as to the way things would be handled in the monument. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill. It will be known as the Grand Staircase-Escalante Resource Protection Act. Its sole purpose is to codify the promises the President made when he created the monument. I said to my staff, ``Do not put everything in this bill you think we must have. Just make sure the act is entirely just what the President promised he would do.'' Let me give you some examples of what I mean. On this chart we have the President's statement made on September 18 when he said: ``Families will be able to use this canyon as they always have. The land will remain open for multiple uses, including hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, and grazing.'' Many of the people who have reacted to the creation of the monument have made it clear that there should never be multiple uses on this land. They say that this would be incompatible with its designation as ``wilderness.'' But the President did not designate the land as wilderness. He designated it as a national monument, and he specifically promised--these are his words--that ``The land will remain open for multiple use . . .'' This was taken off the transcript that was available to us the day the President made his statement. Another promise the President made is on this chart. It is a little bit longer, but to the people in Utah it may be even more important. He said, ``Mining revenues from Federal and State land help to support your schools.'' He was speaking to the people of Utah. I know the children of Utah have a big stake in school lands located within the boundaries of the monument that I am designating today . . . creating this national monument should not and will not come at the expense of Utah's children. That is a very important commitment made by the President. It has to do with the fact that almost 200,000 acres in this monument are owned by a trust that administers these lands for the benefit of Utah's schoolchildren. Under the monument designation, conceivably the trust would lose that ownership unless there can be a pattern of swapping out school acres for other acres outside the boundaries of the monument. These are a few of the President's promises. There was another one which I do not have on the chart but that struck me personally. The President said, ``We will appoint an exchange working group, including Congressman Orton and the two Senators as well as the Governor and others, that will examine this issue of school trust land.'' It has now been 6 months since the President made that statement, and no such group has been proposed by anybody. It has been 6 months since the President made that proclamation, and we don't see any indication that he intends to instruct people to follow through on the promise that the people will be able to use the canyon as they always have. And we see no indication that the people in the administration are taking any steps to make Utah's schoolchildren whole for the income that they will lose as a result of the creation of this monument. If I were to pick up the phone and call the White House today and ask for Leon Panetta to remind him of the pledge he made to me, I would be told, ``Mr. Panetta doesn't work here anymore.'' So I have decided to take the promises that the President made in this speech, which was before the entire country on national television, and write those promises into law. Many people have said, ``Oh, you are going to do terrible things if you write those into law. You are going to undo every protection that is important to this monument.'' To them I say, if you do not like these promises, argue with William Jefferson Clinton. Don't argue with me because they were his pledges; not mine. Some groups have seized on some language that I have in the bill describing what will be permitted in the monument and say, ``You go far beyond the President in the things you allow. Where did you get the idea that mining and timber and those kinds of things should be allowed?'' My answer is, I took the definition of ``multiple use'' that is in the FLPMA handbook produced by the Department of the Interior and reproduced it, neither subtracting nor adding anything. I made no attempt to put my judgment as to what ``multiple use'' means. I used the manual that is produced by the Department of the Interior to define what ``multiple use'' means. By virtue of the introduction of this bill, we will now have hearings. There will be hearings both in the House and the Senate. I am told that a companion bill will be introduced on the other side of the Capitol. I myself point out that these hearings are open, unlike the process the President followed, which was closed. These hearings will allow those who disagree with me--and I heard from some people this afternoon who disagreed with me quite vehemently--an opportunity to come before the Congress and tell the Congress what they think the President meant when he used these words. These hearings will give the Department of the Interior the opportunity to come before the Congress and tell the Congress what they think the President meant when he used these words. If they can make a plausible case to the Congress, I am perfectly willing to amend the bill and accept changes. The thing I am not willing to do is to accept, as some have said, that ``This was merely a campaign speech. The President should not be held to honor any commitment he made in that speech because it was in the heat of the campaign.'' We are talking, Mr. President, about 1.7 million acres of land in my State. That is a land mass bigger than some of the States represented by Senators who sit here in this Chamber. We are talking about a major action that impacts the future of the people of southern Utah. That being the case, we must codify what the President said so that these commitments are kept whether they were made in a campaign speech or not. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ricardo Velazquez and Cordell Roy be granted floor privileges for the balance of this session.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I don't mean to intrude upon the Senator from New Jersey, if he is prepared to speak next. I was going to ask unanimous consent for up to 10 minutes to speak as if in morning business. I ask unanimous consent that I may proceed for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Sybil Shumway Stewart, Utah's 1996 Mother of the Year. I want to recognize her for the decades of service to her community, her church, and her family. We have been proud to have her represent our State this past year. Sybil Shumway was born in Trenton, UT, on April 1, 1920, the youngest of four daughters, raised under the most humble of circumstances during the Great Depression. Sybil's father was a schoolteacher who taught in Cache County schools and was respected throughout the community. From the earliest age, her parents instilled in her the fundamental values of hard work, honesty and integrity, sacrifice and service. As a student in junior high school, Sybil recalls her civics teacher detailing the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany and subsequently learned to cherish and value the freedoms many of us often take for granted. She committed herself at that time to serving her community and country. She also recognized the importance that she teach her own children to cherish these same values. Sybil graduated from Logan High School and Utah State University in 1942. Her desire to give something back to her community led her to pursue an occupation as a schoolteacher. While she only taught for a short while, she sees many of her students today. Her students never fail to express their appreciation for the skills they learned in her home economics class. On Valentine's Day 1943, Sybil Shumway received an engagement ring in the mail from a young Army Air Corps lieutenant named Boyd Stewart, whom she had dated in college. They were married on May 21, 1943, while Boyd was home on weekend leave. They embarked on their life together and left that night for Randolph Field in Texas where Boyd was stationed as a flight instructor. After 20-plus years of Air Force duty and more than 30 years of running two farms, their marriage is still going strong almost 54 years later. Sybil and Boyd raised 10 children; 6 boys and 4 girls. They taught their children the value of hard work and service to their fellow men. They instilled in each of them a love of God, country, community, and family. Sybil and Boyd's children went on to become schoolteachers, government administrators, successful business owners, elected officials, community activists, farmers, Scout leaders, a published author, and a world record holder. Five of their six sons served in our Nation's Armed Forces. Four of those sons served as missionaries for their church. Most important, following the example of their mother, those 10 children are now devoted parents to 41 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. Indeed, Sybil's legacy and example will live on for generations to come. In our world today, success is unfortunately often measured by great wealth, an expensive education, and the recognition and honors of men. Sybil Stewart has proven that the greatest success one can have is within the walls of their own home. I congratulate her on the completion of her term as Utah's 1996 Mother of the Year. I know that to her family however, she will always be the Mother of the Year.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend from Arizona. I will not consume much time. The Senator from Massachusetts appropriately corrected me on any suggestion that there is a similarity between the salary of a Senator and the salary of some of these workers, and I accept that correction on his part. I meant not to make that comparison. I didn't think I had made that comparison. But if he felt that was made, it was appropriate for him to raise the issue. I would like to revisit the issue of the pay increase, because I have now been given some additional information that I did not have when I spoke before. The charge has been made that Federal Express has not given a pay raise to its employees in 7 years. I am now told that the truth is somewhat different, and that all kinds of programs relating to pay have been initiated within the last 3 years. There is now an opportunity for an employee to get professional pay. There is an incentive pay plan. There are programs for merit increases. And there is a program for best-practice pay. So the company has put in place this series of 4 opportunities, making all employees eligible for a pay increase that could be as high as 10 percent annually. I think it is important, in the spirit of full disclosure, as we go about this debate, that we not leave on the record unanswered the charge that Federal Express has not made any pay increases available to any of its employees for 7 years, and the implication, therefore, it is the duty of the U.S. Senate to somehow punish them for this kind of activity on their part, when in fact they have put in place programs that make pay increases available to their employees up to the level of 10 percent annually. If I may, again, without suggesting in any way any comparability between the salary of a Senator and the salary of some of the employees we are talking about here, I do wish that Members of the Senate could look forward to any kind of cost-of-living increase and not have had their pay frozen for the entire time I have been here. Maybe my coming caused that. If that is the case, I suppose there are plenty that hope I leave. I would like to think that was coincidental. Mr. President, I repeat again what I said before. I think everybody has said whatever they want to say on this issue. It is clear that one side wants to take the opportunity to attack Federal Express and, thereby, perhaps tilt things in one direction or another in a time of a union election, to pay off whatever political debts to the unions that are urging them to attack Federal Express. The other side has made it clear that we want to get on with the legislative process of providing funds for the FAA. I see no reason to repeat all of these arguments. I see no reason to wait until next Thursday to get this resolved. Everybody knows how it comes out, as the Senator from Illinois indicated when he spoke. I hope that people who are in leadership positions, who can deal with these things and deal with the Senator from Massachusetts, can sit down and get this thing resolved so that we can have a vote on it, let the Senate work its will, having heard all of the arguments, and get the money that is so desperately needed into the hands of the people who are so importantly in charge of something as significant as our Nation's airlines and safety.

Mr. BENNETT. Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank the Senator from Arizona. Mr. President, I am not a member of the Commerce Committee. If we could choose our committees without the restrictions of reality, I would like to be a member of the Commerce Committee. I join in this debate, nonetheless, because of the history with the Commerce Committee. I don't know how far back some of the current Members go, but I was a very, from my present standpoint, young lobbyist for the U.S. Department of Transportation in the first 2 years of the Nixon administration. We didn't call ourselves lobbyists. They don't call them lobbyists today. They call themselves ``congressional liaison people'' or, in my case, I was in charge of congressional relations. But we were lobbyists, and in the spirit of full and fair disclosure, I will use that term. My assignment from then Secretary John Volpe, who had been Governor of the State of Massachusetts, was to convince the Congress to pass the Airport Airways Act and create the Airport Airways Trust Fund. My predecessors at the Department, who had been Democrats under the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, had tried to do the same thing and had been unsuccessful, for a variety of reasons. There were some in the administration who said we would be unsuccessful as well. Representing a Republican President to a Democratic Congress, it was not supposed to be the most harmonious kind of circumstance. So I came up here in the Senate, obviously not on the floor, but up in the gallery, and in Senators' offices and, with my staff, worked with the then-chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator Magnuson, and ultimately succeeded in getting strong bipartisan support for the Airport-Airways Act and the creation of the aviation trust fund. We thought, naively it turns out, that by creating the trust fund we would produce stability in funding for the FAA and airport-airways so that there would never be any doubt of the flow of funds for people involved in keeping our national airways safe. So it comes as a moment of nostalgia to me to come to the Senate now, some 25 years later, and find that the flow of funds out of the aviation trust fund that I had a small hand in creating have been interrupted, cut off, jeopardized by an attempt to filibuster in this body the bill that would provide those funds, and that the intent of Congress, in which I participated to see to it that there would never be any challenge to that funding, has been frustrated here. I understand the Senator from Massachusetts has every right to do what he is doing. I have participated in filibusters myself when I felt the cause was just and the point was well worth making. But I find this more an attempt to play to the gallery, if I may, than to address the issue, because it has been virtually conceded on both sides that it is simply a matter of time before the process plays itself out. The bill will pass. The money will be available to keep the airport and airways trust fund funding going to the FAA. The arguments have all been repeated again and again and again. I find that a little sad from that past history. I was hoping to be able to look back on my career and say that the one thing I did while I was at the Department of Transportation was help remove the airport- airways thing from this kind of disruption. Now I see that that is not possible. I sit here, not as a member of the committee, and hear the debate going back and forth. ``It was an innocent mistake.'' And, ``It is a technical correction.'' ``Oh, no. This is a major policy issue.'' Back and forth, back and forth, with voices being raised on both sides. If I may, Mr. President, I am reminded of an experience in my even younger days, before I served in the Nixon administration, all the way back to my teenage years, the first experience I ever had listening to a debate in the Supreme Court. This was a debate over the sentences that were given to the Rosenbergs back in the days when President Eisenhower was President. You say, what does that have to do with this? Absolutely nothing, except this one phrase sticks in my head. In the course of that debate, one of the Supreme Court Justices asked one of the lawyers, ``Who are you?'' The lawyer was taken aback by this question, and gave his name. The Justice said, ``No. I know what your name is. What is your standing? Who are you with respect to this case?'' The man then said, ``Well, I represent somebody who is next friend of the Rosenbergs, a man named Edelman. I am the lawyer for Mr. Edelman.'' The Justice called for a law book. The debate went on for a bit, and the Justice interrupted the lawyer again and said, ``Is that the same Edelman as in the case of California v. Edelman?'' The lawyer was stunned that the Supreme Court Justice would have this in his mind, and he stumbled around and he said, ``Yes, it is.'' At which point the Justice closed the law book with a look of some disgust and said, ``A vagrancy case.'' ``Oh, no,'' said the lawyer. ``That was not a vagrancy case. That was a free speech case.'' It was the wrong thing to say to a Supreme Court Justice, who reopened the book and said, reading, ``California v. Edelman, a vagrancy case,'' at which point the lawyer compounded his mistake by saying, ``Well, it may say that on the heading, but if you'll read the case, you'll see that it was a free speech case.'' Whereupon, the Justice leaned forward and said, ``Let's ask Mr. Justice Clark. He wrote the opinion.'' And Mr. Justice Clark said, ``It was a vagrancy case.'' I remember that very clearly as a young teenager in my first experience with the Supreme Court. The reason I bring it up now is, I sit here as a Member of the Senate, not a member of the Commerce Committee, and hear this argument. ``It is a technical fix.'' ``No. It's not. It's a major policy question.'' And like the Justice, I would say, let us ask the man who wrote the opinion what it is. The man who wrote the opinion, as I understand, in this case is the ranking member of the Commerce Committee, who says it is a technical fix. I heard him say so on the floor here. He says it is a technical correction. He is the ranking member of the committee from the minority party. The chairman agrees with him, the chairman from the majority party. I find that convincing, having heard the people who wrote the legislative words we are arguing about saying this is what it is. I do not want to be in the position of that lawyer before the Supreme Court trying to say, ``The man who wrote the opinion doesn't know what the opinion really says.'' ``The man who wrote the provision doesn't really know what the provision really is.'' So, Mr. President, I hope we can move forward quickly. I hope, having made the statements, having discharged our political responsibilities to the various people on both sides who have urged us to do this, we can move quickly. I hope we can move this afternoon to say, all right, we have made our position clear. We have said what it is we have to say. We have satisfied the constituents that come to us and plead for support here. Now we have at stake the safety, the continuance, the future of the Nation's air system. Let us get on with it. Let us see to it that there is no challenge to the airport and airways safety and progress in this tremendously important area. In my home State, we are trying to get ready for the Olympics in 2002. When the world comes to Utah in 2002, they are not going to come by ox cart the way they came the first time in the 1840's. They are going to come by air. When they come, the facilities have to be in place. The opportunity to get those facilities in place is being held up by our failure to provide this funding. I think that is a shame. I think we ought to move ahead. Finally, I keep hearing all these things about how terrible Federal Express is. The most--I ask unanimous consent that I might be allowed the proceed for 3 additional minutes.

Mr. BENNETT. I hear how terrible Federal Express is. The only concrete statement really that I have heard is that Federal Express employees have gone for years without a pay increase. I realize that is a terrible thing. I have gone for years without a pay increase. Indeed, the whole time I have been in the Senate I have been denied a pay increase. I wish I had the salary I had before I came to the Senate when I took at least a 50 percent pay cut in basic pay, and more than that in bonus pay, in order to become a Senator. I do not think that is a demonstration of prima facie that this company is antiworker, because if we accept that, then the Senate is clearly antiworker and we probably ought to do something about that, too. So, Mr. President, I hope we could proceed with this and we could recognize that the positions have been staked out. The votes are where they are. I hope we will get on with it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I would like to raise an issue with the chairman of significance to taxpayers in Utah and across the Nation: the extent to which the Federal Government is performing functions that, in a free- market economy such as ours, are better left to the private sector. Specifically, it has been brought to my attention that the U.S. Geological Survey [USGS] is competing with private sector companies when it offers water resources-related engineering, scientific and technical services--services that are readily available in the private sector--to non-Federal entities at far below market rates. Not surprisingly, the non-Federal entities involved often agree to contract with the USGS, to the great detriment of private sector firms in this field. This practice, some have termed it ``predatory competition,'' also appears to involve the USGS in activities far beyond its stated mission. Mr. President, according to its informative home page on the World Wide Web, the mission of the USGS is ``to provide geologic, topographic and hydrologic information that contributes to the wise management of the Nation's natural resources and promotes the health, safety, and well-being of the people.'' May I ask the chairman if he would agree to investigate this issue in the hearing process next year to determine if this is a problem that should be addressed?

Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend from Florida for the useful question. The electric stored value products study should in no way delay or otherwise affect the Federal Reserve Board's further consideration of these other proposed Regulation E revision, or any other revisions to Regulation E not involving electronic stored value products.

Mr. BENNETT. I also want to thank the Senator from Washington for his consideration. I would urge the IHS to work closely with the local Navajo Chapter as well as with San Juan County, the State of Utah, the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, and the Navajo Nation in this endeavor. Senator Hatch and I strongly encourage all parties to work together, and to maximize any federal dollars made available through this request with matching funds. Again, I thank the chairman for his assistance on this matter. doe/fossil energy cooperative r&d program

Mr. BENNETT. I wish to bring to the attention of the Senate a matter that, while it may appear small, is of great importance to the Utah Navajo population of San Juan County in the southeastern part of Utah. The matter involves the Montezuma Creek Health Clinic in Montezuma Creek, UT. Over the past several years, my colleague Senator Hatch and I have worked with the Indian Health Service [IHS], the State of Utah, the local Utah Chapter of the Navajo Nation, the county of San Juan, and the Navajo Nation in an effort to improve the delivery of health care services in San Juan County. In this region, which includes the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona and New Mexico, there are six IHS hospitals and 18 outpatient facilities. Unfortunately, none of these facilities are located in Utah. In fact, the only IHS facility in the entire State of Utah is an outpatient facility located at Fort Duchesne nearly 350 miles from Montezuma Creek. The need for the Montezuma Creek Clinic is clearly justifiable. It is the population center for the eastern portion of the Utah Navajos. Approximately 6,000 Navajos live in this area; and, unfortunately, their health care needs are greatly underserved. Although the building housing the Montezuma Creek Clinic is currently functional, it is, nevertheless, in poor condition. The facility has undergone repairs and currently is in the process of having its roof replaced. Within the near future, the facility will eventually have to be replaced in order to continue to provide care to an average of 65 patients per day. The patchwork of repairs will no longer be a viable option. Accordingly, it is our desire that, at the very least, $35,000 be provided for a preliminary land study, and engineering and architectural design for a new facility to replace the existing old structure.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the chairman for his views and look forward to working with him in this important matter.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. Was there a sufficient second for the seeking of the yeas and nays? Mr. BYRD addressed the Chair.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, if I might be allowed, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for his correction about the leadership of the Senator from New Hampshire. I agree that is where the credit goes. I say to the people of New Hampshire that Pat Moynihan is not generally thought of as a right-wing extremist, and to have him join the Senator from New Hampshire in this circumstance should provide sufficient cover for anyone who thinks the issue through.

Mr. BENNETT. It is also my understanding that according to the medical information the health of the mother might in fact be in danger by this process.