Robert Bennett

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, that was going to be my next question of the Senator. It is my understanding that the bill says that in those circumstances where the life of the mother is in danger, the prohibitions of the bill would not apply.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I remember the original debate on this issue when the Senator from California talked about the very few numbers of procedures and insisted that medical personnel--doctors--were solidly in favor of allowing these things to continue. I ask the Senator if he has seen the article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, where a group of doctors said it is time to stop listening to the politicians, stop listening to the special interest groups, and let the doctors speak. And they then said, ``We know the vast majority of these procedures are done for elective purposes only and that the health of the mother is, in fact, never in danger.'' I ask the Senator if he is familiar with that presentation and if my memory of it is correct?

Mr. BENNETT. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BENNETT. I will not prolong the conversation. I thank the Senator for yielding for these questions. I make this comment. My personal position on abortion is under the pro-life banner. I am one who would be willing to consider an abortion in a circumstance where the pregnancy came about as a result of a rape or incest-- which is really nothing more than another form of rape--or where the life of the mother is in fact in jeopardy by virtue of the pregnancy. I was, therefore, somewhat troubled with the initial debate by those who kept insisting that the sole justification for this procedure was because the life of the mother was at risk, and I worried about Congress micromanaging medical procedures. But I have come completely to the conclusion that we did the right thing in passing the bill in the first place. I voted for it. I intend to vote for the override, and I am heartened by the comment of my friend from New York, who is known for his independence, who is a pro-choice Senator on this issue but who summarized I think better than any of us can in a single sentence when he said, ``For me, this comes too close to infanticide.'' Infanticide, for whatever purpose, is not something with which I wish to be associated. I congratulate the Senator from Pennsylvania on his leadership on this issue. I congratulate him for his compassion. I congratulate him for the depth of his commitments to an issue that I think should touch the hearts of all Americans. I thank him for yielding.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to continue for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I am about to do something I have been warned is unwise, and that is to enter into debate and ask questions without knowing in advance what my position will be. I do this in the hope I might learn something, but I realize I might get caught. It is with some trepidation I do this. I say to the Senator from Delaware, first, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am sure he does not know this. I would plead guilty. I am the lobbyist in the Nixon administration who was responsible for convincing the Congress to create Amtrak in the first place. I worked as a head lobbyist for John Volpe of the Department of Transportation. My final assignment in the Nixon administration was to convince the Congress to create Amtrak. In the process of convincing the Congress, I remember saying to the appropriate chairmen of the appropriate committees that Congress only has to subsidize Amtrak for a few years, that within 3 and certainly no more than 4, Amtrak would become a profitmaking corporation, stand alone, based on the projections that were then being made for the use of train service. Then political reality set in after the bill was passed. The blessed Harley Staggers, late chairman of the House Commerce Committee, made it very clear that nothing would proceed unless a train servicing all of the junior colleges in West Virginia was kept on. Indeed, the senior Senator from Montana, who was then the majority leader, made it clear that nothing would pass the Senate unless a train to Yellowstone in Montana was kept on. Now, my question is this, Mr. President. I recognize fully that passenger transportation in the Eastern corridor--we abbreviate and say Boston to Washington--is a very intelligent use of the rails. I question, however, from personal experience, all of the rest of Amtrak's route structure. I ask the Senator from Delaware if he has any sense of whether or not trains are being kept on for those parts of the country where they have nostalgic value but not the kind of practical value that he has described in his own commute, daily, from Delaware.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank my friend from Delaware. Mr. President, I would like to comment with the understanding that my friend retains the floor. First, let me share a bit of history that I am sure my friend from Delaware will find instructive in this. What the Senator from Delaware has described was, in fact, in the original legislation where we had the opportunity to say to the Governor, ``If you want this to continue in your State, you have to pay x amount.'' And that is how we got rid of a lot of the trackage. I remember one New England Governor, whose State will remain nameless, who complained bitterly that certain trains had to stay. We realized that quickly it was a matter of State pride. And we ran the numbers. We sat down with him, and said, ``Governor, for the amount of money you have to pay you could afford to pick up every one of the passengers that get on this train at his or her home in a limousine and drive them to any location in the United States cheaper than you could keep this train.'' When he looked at it, he said, ``You mean the average boarding of that train is 3 per day?'' We said, ``Yes. You are trying to hang onto this train as a matter of State pride. That is what it is.'' That is how we got rid of a very large chunk of the original passenger network. And that is what led us to believe in 1970 that we could, in fact, rationalize this network to the point where it would perhaps become profitable. But a number of things happened in the meantime. I have had people say to me that the airplane has destroyed passenger services in the United States--rail passenger service--as people prefer to take the airplane. That is not true. It was the Interstate Highway System that destroyed the rail passenger service in this country. Something like 98 percent of intercity trips in this country are still done on the Interstate Highway System. When we built the Interstate Highway System we sounded the death knell for rail passenger service except in congested corridors like Washington to Boston where it is just as fast to take the train as it would be to fly. I had an office in New York as well as an office in Washington when I was in private business. I found that I could get to downtown New York just as fast on a metroliner as I could by taking the plane to LaGuardia and then fighting the traffic with a taxicab. So I assure the Senator from Delaware that I am in favor of doing what I can to see to it that intelligent rail passenger service continues in the heavily congested corridors, primarily the Northeast corridor. So all I would say to my friend is that I was unaware of the details of this bill until I heard him speaking. I will now examine it. I assure him that my vote will not be based on whether or not there is a train running through Utah but on what makes good national policy sense. That does not mean that I will vote with the Senator. That just means that I will look at the issue in the way I would not have had I not heard him speak on it. I will make one comment on the discussion he has had with respect to the National Highway Trust Fund. Again, during my years in the Department of Transportation, I was getting intimately acquainted with the National Highway Trust Fund. And one of the other programs that I was responsible for convincing the Congress to pass in that same period was the airport and airways trust fund. We naively believed when we got that bill through both Houses of Congress and down to President Nixon's desk that we had solved the funding crisis for the FAA for perpetuity. Now there is a trust fund set up to be funded by ticket revenues and takeoff and landing charges at the various airports that would see to it that the FAA never need compete with any other agency for Federal funds. It had its own trust fund and its own source of funding. Well, Mr. President, then came along the unified budget. I do not know which President it was that did it. I am afraid if I checked it that I would discover that it was probably a Republican. But the fact is that the highway trust fund always runs a surplus. The funds are subjected to appropriations, and the money to build our highway infrastructure is always constrained by political decisions made on this floor and at the other end of the Capitol. And the people who run the Federal Highway Administration can no longer, as it was envisioned that they would when President Eisenhower worked to create it, depend on a steady source of income for their fund. Neither can the people who run the FAA depend on a steady source of funds because their fund is always overfunded and Presidents always dip into that fund. Now they say they do not dip into the fund. They use the mechanisms of the unified budget to underappropriate from the fund so the money in paper is still there but in fact it is never spent. I say to the Senator that, if he created a trust fund for rail, he would discover that subsequent Presidents would do the same thing to that trust fund that they have done to the highway trust fund and the airport and airways trust fund, and every other fund. They would render it, frankly, a dead letter. If we were to spend the amount of money--to conclude this on the airport and airways trust fund--on the airport and airways trust fund actually on airports and airways right up to the full amount that comes into the trust fund every year, we wouldn't have the current problems that we have. Not to delay the debate, but my friend enjoys a good anecdote. So I will leave him with this as I leave the floor. In a discussion about computer systems and their vulnerability to hackers getting into computer systems and having access to information that they do not have, the expert who was running that discussion said, ``All parts of the Government are vulnerable. The hackers can get into anything--the Pentagon, the Social Security files, anything--with one exception; and, that is the FAA computer system running our air traffic control system. The reason it is not vulnerable to a hacker is that it is so obsolete and so ancient that no amount of modern computer activity can get into that.'' So I share that with my friend and indicate to him that a trust fund might not be the answer to his problem. I assure the Senator that I will now look at this bill in a new light.

Mr. BENNETT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, something is going to happen today in the State of Arizona that will have great impact on the State of Utah. I would like to discuss that issue in somewhat greater detail than I have been able to do in the press. Unfortunately, we now live in a time where the press looks for the 7-second sound bite or the two-sentence summary to print in the newspaper, and the overall issue gets lost. So I appreciate the opportunity to lay out the whole circumstance of what has happened, and is happening, for the record. Several weeks ago in the Washington Post there was a story about a leak out of the White House saying that the President was considering creating a national monument in the State of Utah, somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million acres. That came as unexpected news to me and the other Members in the Utah delegation, and we raised the issue. ``Oh, no,'' we were assured, ``nothing is really under consideration. These are just discussions that are taking place in the White House, and they probably should not have been leaked. There shouldn't be any press discussion about it because nothing really is going to happen.'' But the rumors persisted. The buildup continued to the point that our Governor decided to call Secretary Babbitt. I also called Secretary Babbitt and asked about this issue. Finally, last Saturday, Senator Hatch and I were invited to go to the Interior Department to meet with Secretary Babbitt and members of the White House staff to talk about this proposed national monument. When we got there, having been told in advance that the Secretary was going to calm our fears and lay out a full statement of what was going on, I got a little startled when the Secretary began the presentation by saying, ``We're here just to listen.'' And that was all. Well, Senator Hatch and I indicated that we were very concerned that something as significant as this was going to be done without any consultation with Congress, let alone Members of the Utah delegation. Congress as a whole, having historically played a significant role in the creation of national monuments, was being cut out. ``Well,'' said Secretary Babbitt, ``I can tell you categorically, no decision has been made with respect to this.'' We said, ``We read in the newspapers that the President is going to announce it on Wednesday, when he's in Arizona at the Grand Canyon.'' And Secretary Babbitt repeated, ``I tell you categorically, no decision has been made.'' When we met with the press afterward, they asked us, ``What do you think will happen?'' I am afraid I am cynical enough, Mr. President, and I said, ``I believe the President will make the announcement on Wednesday.'' Senator Hatch--perhaps he is a little more trusting--said, ``I can't believe that the President would do that, given the assurances we've just been given.'' It is not just Republicans that are involved; the Democratic Congressman who represents the district in which this monument will be formed, uttered the same concern, expressed the same amazement on the fact that he had not been consulted, and came away from his interview with Secretary Babbitt saying ``I have been assured there is nothing imminent going to happen.'' So we had the Democratic Congressman saying, ``nothing imminent.'' We had the senior Senator from Utah saying he was sure there would be no announcements. As I say, I was more cynical. I predicted that there would be an announcement. I went away from the meeting convinced that, in spite of the assurances we were given that no decision had been made, in fact we were on a track toward a certainty of an announcement on Wednesday--today. We then went through the weekend. And at the beginning of the week, the news reports started to come in, from CNN and elsewhere, that the President was going to announce the formation of a major national monument in Utah when he was at the Grand Canyon. ``Oh, no,'' said the White House. ``We deny these news reports. Anybody who says that is going to happen does not know what he is talking about. No decision has been made.'' Once again, I continued to believe that the President was going to do it. Today I received a phone call from Leon Panetta. He told me, to my great surprise, that today the President will announce the creation of a new national monument in the State of Utah in the neighborhood of 2 million acres. Among the other things Mr. Panetta told me was that there will be a 3-year period for the development of a management plan for this land. In that 3-year period, he said, all of the issues will be dealt with and sorted out. That is, frankly, Mr. President, a ``trust us'' kind of statement on the part of the administration. ``We are going to turn the process completely around. Instead of going through the development of the plan and then creating the monument, we will create the monument, and develop the plan after the fact,'' but ``trust us, we will take care of all of your concerns.'' Given the history leading up to this announcement, Mr. President, it is fairly difficult for many people in Utah to trust the administration on this one. That having been said, I want to take the balance of the time to talk about the misconceptions surrounding this entire circumstance. I cannot find a better place to summarize most of those misconceptions than today's New York Times. They have an editorial entitled ``A New and Needed National Monument.'' Once again, Mr. President, the fact that this appears in the New York Times the day the President is making his announcement says to me that they knew far in advance of Leon Panetta's call to me that the President was going to do this, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Based on the New York Times editorial, there are several misconceptions about western land use which continue to perpetuate myths, at least in Manhattan, if not all of the Eastern States that are unfamiliar with the realities in the West. The editorial starts out praising the President for placing an area off limits to development. Now, I am sure that to the people in the New York area, development means hotels, condominiums, and other commercial activities. But this land is already developed in many areas by western definition; that is, there are grazing activities going on in this land. Mr. Panetta assured me that the grazing would be allowed to continue. There is hunting that goes on in this area. Mr. Panetta assured me that the hunting would be allowed to continue. There are State parks already in this land, which means tourism. Mr. Panetta assured me the State parks would be excluded from the designation and tourism would be allowed to continue. Finally, there are thousands of people who live within the boundaries of this national monument. I assume they will be allowed to continue to live there under the same circumstances. We will not find out until we go through this 3-year process. All these activities constitutes, in western terms, development, Mr. President, and I was assured by the Chief of Staff in the White House that that kind of development will be allowed to continue. So when the New York Times says the President is setting the area ``off limits to development,'' the New York Times is at odds with the statement of the President's Chief of Staff. It goes on to say: The President's move is also virtually certain to block plans by a Dutch company, Andalex Resources, to develop a coal reserve twice the size of Manhattan that sits right in the middle of the wilderness area. The administration has tried to persuade the company to swap these lands for an equivalent amount of coal in less vulnerable parts of the State, but the company has said no. Two items, Mr. President. No. 1, the suggestion that the coal reserve is right in the middle of the wilderness area--``wilderness,'' by definition in the law, means land where there is no evidence of the presence of humans and, very specifically, land where there are no roads. I have, myself, driven over the existing road to the mine site. You cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, say that an area where there is an existing, used road, constitutes wilderness. The mine site is not smack in the middle of the wilderness area. The mine site is miles away from the wilderness area. Second, the New York Times says the administration has tried to persuade the company to swap out for lands of equal value. That is a very interesting statement to make in the newspaper. Here are some of the facts, if you take the Bruce Babbitt method of appraisal of value. The market value of the coal in this area is $1.2 trillion. There are some who say, why, that is an inflated figure. You cannot expect to get that much out. They are right. But that is the way Bruce Babbitt appraises minerals in the ground when he wants to make press release statements about how valuable a developing gold mine is. So we will use the Bruce Babbitt method of appraisal here and say we have 1.2 trillion dollars' worth of coal. I do not know of any other coalfield in the State, or the Nation or the world that comes to $1.2 trillion in projected value. How can they say ``we are going to swap out equal value, but you, nasty coal company, are not willing to cooperate?'' I would say to the administration, find me another coalfield with an estimated value of $1.2 trillion before you start talking about swaps. The New York Times conveniently does not mention that when they talk about the swap. The New York Times goes on to talk about the way the President has done this. He is doing it under the Antiquities Act. He says that is what gives him the right to act without consulting Congress, and the New York Times obviously agrees. It says: The Antiquities Act, inspired by the discovery of archaeological treasures in the Southwest at the turn of the century, has served as a useful mechanism for Presidents to preserve valuable public lands without congressional consent. The act has been invoked 66 times, and many of the Nation's most treasured sites, including the Grand Canyon, where Mr. Clinton will make his announcement, began as protected monuments and ended up as national parks by act of Congress. All true. What they do not tell us, however, Mr. President--and, indeed, what they may not know--is that the Antiquities Act has never been used by a President since the passage of the two landmark land usage acts by Congress, NEPA and FLMPA. For the C-SPAN junkies, NEPA is the National Environment Policy Act; FLMPA, the Federal Land Management Policy Act. NEPA and FLMPA were Congress' attempt to bring order to the process. NEPA and FLMPA have clear procedures for moving ahead on a matter of this kind, and no President has ever ignored NEPA and FLMPA to create a national monument until now. Citing the precedence of Theodore Roosevelt and his use of the Antiquities Act, as the New York Times by implication does, does not excuse Mr. Clinton from violating appropriate processes. Enough about the misconceptions in the editorial. There are other things that need to be brought to our attention that we should understand about this proposal. One thing I hope the editorial writers in the New York Times will realize, if they do not already, is that there is a great difference between a national monument and wilderness. Wilderness, as defined by the law, is a territory that is set aside because there is no evidence that human beings have ever been there. Although there is clear evidence of human activity in most of this area, there are about 350,000 acres that qualify as wilderness, under the most strict definition of that term. The Utah delegation wanted to set aside those 350,000 acres as wilderness. We were prevented from doing so by a filibuster on this floor. We had enough votes to pass it, but we did not have enough votes to shut off debate. Those 350,000 acres of pristine wilderness will now be included in the national monument. What does that mean? That means that tourists can go there; that means people can camp there; that means people can take mechanized vehicles there, because all of that is permitted at a national monument. It is not permitted in a wilderness area, but it is permitted in a national monument. Ironically, when you create a national monument, you must, of necessity, create visitor centers. There are buildings within a national monument, which would not be allowed in a wilderness area. You must pave the roads because the tourists don't go over Jeep trails. We have plenty of national monuments in Utah, with miles and miles of paved roads. Ironically, we are now going to see the road, which they are trying to stop the coal company from using, paved, so that tourist buses can go over it. And then we must have concessions. If you have a 2 million acre area set apart for tourism, you have to have a place for them to relieve themselves, a place to refresh themselves. And you are going to see refreshment stands, hot dog stands; and you are going to maybe even see, in as in the big national parks, hotels, cafeterias, and movie theaters--all set up to meet the demands of the tourists. Do you do this to protect the wilderness? I am not sure that the people who are applauding this set-aside as being a way to protect the wilderness understand that a national monument is not a road to wilderness. A national monument is a road to a national park, and a national park is a major tourist attraction with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people coming to an area that is now completely desolate. This is what the New York Times thinks is a really good way to protect the wilderness and the pristine nature of this land. Going on to further misconceptions, one thing that the folks in Manhattan have probably never heard of, because it is unheard of in the East, is something we in the West call school trust lands. When the Western States were created, the Congress, in addition to holding most of the land in Federal ownership, created a series of alternate sections every so often along the land. Almost thrown across the face of the land like smallpox eruptions, these sections would be owned by the State and held in trust for the value of the school children in that State. There are over 200,000 acres of school trust lands in the area that the President will set apart as a national monument. Oh, we are assured that the money that would come to the school children, if these lands were used for mineral development, will be made up some other way. If you go, again, to the Bruce Babbitt method of appraisal, at $1.2 trillion, the amount the schoolchildren would get out of it would be on the billions of dollars. Are we prepared in this Congress to appropriate billions of dollars to make the Utah schoolchildren whole? Of course, we are not. And, of course, that number is too high. But whatever the appropriate number is, the President is asking us to trust him that Utah schoolchildren will be made whole. I can tell you how Utah's schoolchildren have reacted. In Kane County, the county where the majority of this monument will lie, the city of Kanab has, today, shut down in protest. The schoolchildren have been let out of school and they are walking the streets of Kanab wearing black armbands and carrying posters protesting the administration's decision. The president of the Utah Education Association--a group not known for its Republican proclivities--has publicly said that the administration has committed ``felonious assault on Utah schoolchildren'' by the way they are approaching this. That may come as news to the New York Times, who has never heard of school trust lands, but those are the reactions of the education leaders--not the Utah congressional delegation, not the Republican establishment--but the education leaders in the State of Utah. So, Mr. President, I summarize this way. We have a proposal from the President to create a massive, new national monument in my State. Am I opposed to a new national monument in Utah? I can't be opposed in principle. A new national monument will indeed mean many tourists and great activity in my State. But we have been given this proposal after assurances that it was not going to happen, at a time when we were told it wasn't going to happen, with a presentation that we should now trust the administration to work out all of the details. If, indeed, the whole thing is done in proper good faith, I believe we could end up with a national monument that makes sense in one area, wilderness that made sense in another area, and mineral activity that made sense, environmentally, in the third area. The President's actions do not lead me to believe that that will be the result. On the contrary, the way he has proceeded leads me to believe that we are in for a protracted period of controversy and difficulty over this issue. I wish the President had followed the procedures laid down by the Congress in NEPA and FLPMA and had given us an orderly process to produce a worthwhile result. Instead, he has chosen a photo op that will undoubtedly be gorgeous. As we look at the evening news, we will see the President with the Grand Canyon in the background, with Vice President Gore standing at one side and Carol Browner at the other side, proclaiming his protection of the beauties of nature from the plunderers. Then when the photo op has passed and the television images have faded from our screen, the realities of what he has done will leave us with 3 years of hard slogging trying to sort this out and come up with the proper kind of result. I don't wish to say that I do not trust the administration. They say, ``Trust us in this circumstance,'' but I conclude with the advice that was left by Ronald Reagan: ``Trust but verify.'' I intend to do whatever I can through this process to see that the administration keeps its initial pledges of guaranteeing that existing rights will not be trampled, and that the schoolchildren of Utah will be taken care of. ``Trust but verify'' should become our watchword. Mr. President, there is one other thing about the coal mine that people should understand and is not outlined in most of the press reports dealing with this land. We have images of coal mining that are very, very hurtful. We see strip mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. We see smokestacks belching out black smoke and blaming it on coal. When the administration talks about stopping coal mining in this area, there is an immediate emotional reaction that this is a good thing to do. I have personally been to the proposed location of this mine. We are not talking about strip mining here, Mr. President, we are talking about mining below the surface of the ground. The only impact on the ground would be a mine opening smaller than one of the walls here on the side of the Senate --an opening just wide enough to bring out the trams carrying the coal, and that is it. With long-wall mining technology, you can go into the mine and produce the coal with no more impact on the surface than that. Second, we are not talking about the kind of coal that comes out of West Virginia and Kentucky, a high-sulfur coal which when burned produces dramatic damage to the atmosphere. We are talking about the low-sulfur coal that the environmentalists are hoping we can find to burn in this country. We are talking about coal that will produce the right kind of environmental impact when it ultimately ends up in a furnace somewhere. So, by saying we are going to stop the production of low-sulfur coal in Utah, people are in fact admitting they are going to increase or at least maintain the burning of high-sulfur coal that comes from elsewhere with the appropriate damage to the environment. Finally, all of this talk about a Dutch company implies that you are going to see a giant come from overseas to somehow fasten itself on Utah and suck things out of Utah's ground. The company may indeed have its shareholders as citizens of a European country. I do not know exactly where they live. I do know the company has been a responsible, tax-paying, job-producing corporate citizen of the State of Utah for decades. It is already mining coal in an environmentally sensitive way in central Utah. It has demonstrated that it knows how to do it, minimizing any kind of environmental impact. If there ever was a company I would want to proceed with the development of these coal resources, it would be one with the experience and the track record of good corporate citizenship which this company has shown in the years it has operated in Utah. So it is true to say that their shareholders don't live in Utah or maybe in the United States. But that I find is irrelevant when one recognizes what they have done for our State and how important the economic activity that they have generated for our State has been. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNETT

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

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I noticed that some of my colleagues commented about the service of Howard Greene, retiring as Sergeant at Arms of the Senate. They referred to their long years of experience with Howard and the great service that he has rendered to the Senate during those years. I am a relatively new Senator and don't have that kind of experience to draw on, but I can offer the perspective of a relative newcomer to this body and to the service that Howard Greene provided when I was trying to find my way around. I found very quickly that if I wanted an answer to a question, I went to Howard Greene and I always got one-- quickly, accurately, and sometimes very, very succinctly. Howard is not a man who wastes words. I found when I needed assistance in working through possible committee assignments and understanding the program and how it all works, Howard Greene was there at my side to give me the assistance I needed and helped me find my way through that, which could be so confusing to a newcomer. Subsequently, as a member of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, I had the opportunity to interact with Howard during appropriations hearings that he was called upon to attend as the Sergeant at Arms. I found that he was not only concerned about Senators and taking care of the needs of Senators, he was also very concerned about the people under his jurisdiction. The Capitol Police come to mind as one area where Howard focused primarily on the personal needs of the members of the Capitol Police. When I made a suggestion in the subcommittee about something that could be done within the law that would make life better for the Capitol Police, Howard picked up on it immediately and said, ``We will do that.'' A little while later, I checked back and said, ``Has anybody followed through on this?'' I needn't have done that checking back. It was Howard Greene who said, ``We will do that,'' and the staffers looked at me and said, ``Yes, Senator, that is in the bill.'' So as he moves on to another circumstance and phase in his life, I want him to know that he goes with not only the good wishes of some of the old-timers around here, but a few of us newcomers as well recognize the service he has rendered, the friendship that he has offered, and the excellence with which he has performed his job. I wish Howard the very best in whatever he now undertakes and tell him that the Senator from Utah will always look fondly upon Howard Greene as one of his friends. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Madam President, I have two points to make with respect to the IRS. Let me preface this by saying that the IRS has a large facility in my State, in Utah, in Ogden, and by and large the overwhelming majority of the people who work in that facility are honest, hard-working, dedicated Americans who are as anxious to do a good job as anybody in any other agency. I learned when I was in the business world that when something is wrong, seriously wrong with an organization, it is usually not with the people. It is usually with the system that they are operating and with the culture. I wish to make two points about the IRS system and culture, with the understanding that I am not criticizing hard-working, dedicated individual civil servants who are doing the best they can in a difficult circumstance. First, the system. Rather than discuss individual horror stories--I will get to that when I talk about culture--I want to go to formal examinations of the IRS that are before us as Members of Congress and call the attention of my fellow Senators and others to two reports. One is from the GAO, the General Accounting Office, that came out in August of this year. It says ``Tax Systems Modernization.'' That is the standard headline, but look at the subheadline that is right there on the front of the report. It says, ``Cyberfile Project Was Poorly Planned And Managed.'' Then on the heels of that, in September 1996, hot off the presses, if you will, the General Accounting Office ``Internal Revenue Service''; the subhead, ``Business Operations Need Continued Improvement.'' These were both submitted to the Governmental Affairs Committee, the chairman of which, Senator Stevens of Alaska, has shared them with me. Let me give a summary of what is in these reports. Again, I look at this as a businessman, and I must say, Madam President, I am appalled. The IRS has not passed an audit during the 5 years they have been audited. Their major failures are they cannot account for revenues from tax returns and refunds. They cannot account for goods received against payments made, and there are computer security weaknesses that have allowed IRS workers to view and alter returns. Think of the movies we have seen of the hacker getting into the system. Well, IRS employees can get into the system and not alter grades the way they do in the movies or set off nuclear wars, but at least alter the returns of some of their friends, if they want to. The recent GAO audit found that interim computer security procedures have been improved, but these weaknesses still remain. The amounts of total revenue, $1.4 trillion, and tax refunds, $122 billion, cannot be verified or reconciled to accounting records maintained for individual taxpayers in the aggregate. In other words, we have a business here that for 5 years has been unable to close its books because they cannot bring them into balance. They cannot reconcile the numbers on this side with the numbers on that side. I find that astounding--5 years and they still cannot reconcile the amounts of total revenue and tax refunds to their accounting records maintained for individual taxpayers. I wonder how forgiving the IRS would be in an audit of a business that said for 5 years we have been unable to reconcile these amounts. Next, the amounts reported for various types of taxes collected--for example, Social Security and income taxes and excise taxes--cannot be substantiated. Next, the reliability of reported estimates of $113 billion for valid accounts receivable and $46 billion for collectible accounts receivable cannot be determined. Next, a significant portion of IRS's reported $3 billion in nonpayroll operating expenses cannot be verified. The amounts IRS reported as appropriations available for expenditure for operations cannot be reconciled with the Treasury's central accounting records showing these amounts. The differences are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Again, how would the IRS react to a company that showed differences in accounts between one division and the other that were hundreds of millions of dollars in size, and was unable to reconcile them? Now, the reason the IRS says it is so difficult for them to pass an audit on these issues is that they were never required to do so until the Chief Financial Officer Act was passed. Therefore, they say their financial management systems and procedures were never set up to be audited. This is incredible. For 5 years, they have been unable to pass an audit. They cannot reconcile their accounts, either internally, or with the Treasury. Yet, they ask us to have a high degree of confidence in the way they handle our taxpayers' money. So that is my first point with respect to the structure. Now, if I may, I will talk about the culture of the IRS. As my colleague from Georgia has done, I will use examples out of my own office as a Senator. Here is one. A taxpayer pays the tax he figures he owes; he sends the tax in to the IRS. The payment sits there for a year and a half, and he hears nothing back. Then, for some reason, the entire amount he paid is sent back to him, with no explanation. The IRS simply sends it back after a year and a half--no explanation, no indication. Two days later, they send him a notice saying that he owes tax for that year at a lesser amount than the amount he had sent them and demands that it be paid immediately. And then, a few weeks later, a notice comes that interest and penalty are now due on the tax that he just paid. He pays the tax, they keep it for a year and a half, send it back to him, with no explanation, then send him a new tax bill. He pays that, and he is told he owes interest and penalty on the new tax bill because he hadn't paid his taxes on time a year and a half before. Well, he thinks, surely, when he explains this, somebody will straighten it out. He goes to the IRS and gets no assistance whatsoever. He was told he owed the interest and penalty, and if he did not pay it, the penalty would continue to accrue. Finally, he came to my office. My constituent liaison person made inquiry with the local IRS people and was told there is no way, legally, to cancel the interest and penalty in this case. Well, fortunately, the members of my staff are as persistent as I would hope they would be. They did not accept that as an answer and, ultimately, the case was resolved. But what does it say about the Agency when it takes the muscle a U.S. Senator to get them to resolve something that is so absurd, as this was? The second case, which is not an individual case but a series of cases that we see--and I would assume that my colleagues see--in our offices often as well. Homemakers, women in marriages that go along for a while, and then they don't work out. They always filed joint returns. The husband fills out the joint return, signs it, hands it to his wife, says, ``Sign it here, I am sending off the tax return.'' They sign it without really understanding what is going on. And then the marriage breaks up, a divorce takes place. The woman has to find a job. She goes out and gets a job, only to discover that her wages are now being attached by the IRS for back taxes that her husband never paid. He did not tell her that he wasn't paying them. He, indeed, lied to her and told her they were being paid and they were all taken care of. She was being defrauded by her husband. But instead of coming after the husband, the IRS comes after her. Why? Because she is the one working. The husband disappeared. She is working and she has to put her life back together. Many times children are involved that she has to support. But instead of saying, yes, we recognize that in the situation you were in before, you, in fact, had no control over the family finances, they are now saying, no, because you signed that return, you are due for those taxes because we can't find your husband. Even in those cases where the woman can prove she did not sign the return, the husband signed her name, forged it, the IRS says, no, your name was on there, there was a signature, and you are coming into the work force, trying to put your life back together, trying to take care of your kids, and you are now responsible for the taxes that your former husband refused to pay. The women in these circumstances feel intimidated, scared, frustrated and, above all, confused. We had one who finally came to my office asking for assistance because the collection officer was abrasive, intimidating, and demanding. Once again, it was only after my congressional liaison person got involved that this woman got some degree of relief from this. So those are the two points I leave you with, Madam President. First, the system, as indicated in these two reports, has very serious systematic problems--trillions of dollars, and they can't make their books balance, internally or with the Treasury books. Second, the culture, where IRS agents find themselves intimidating and demanding, and where ordinary citizens are seeking some kind of redress and protection and ultimately come to Members of the U.S. Senate for help. One final comment. I don't know how true this is of other Senators. I am one who has gone through an IRS audit. I found it a relatively painless kind of experience. I was fully prepared. The individual on the other side recognized that, and we went through things in a civil, proper fashion, and I commented on that to another friend, saying I had been through an IRS audit, and it's not all that bad. He looked at me and he said, ``Bob, it is entirely the luck of the draw. It depends on which agent you get that day. You were lucky enough to get the intelligent, properly motivated, properly directed, dedicated civil servant. I got the other kind. I can tell you, it depends on which one is on duty when your number comes up.'' It should not be that way, Madam President. We should have equal justice under the law, and everybody should be treated the same. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we are talking about a tax credit that is less than 1 percent of the entire economy. But look at what it means to the families with children. Look at what it means to those who will make the decisions themselves--that instead of all the benefits like the Army used to give me in uniforms, barracks, and mess hall privileges, I say, ``Thanks. Just give me the cash and let me decide where I am going to live, what I am going to wear, and what I am going to eat.'' I will make wiser decisions, and the impact on the economy will be better. So this is where it ultimately comes down to, Mr. President. Again, the question: Who is ``we'' when we say we can't afford a cut in tax rates? The ``we'' is the American people, and I believe the American people left to handle the cash rather than the so-called ``benefits'' can make a wiser use of that money than the Government can. I am glad my experience with the Army is over. It was a good experience. But I prefer the freedom I have to have the money and make my own choices, and I think most Americans feel the same way. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, as I contemplate the issue of taxes and their impact on the average family, my mind goes back to an experience that, for me, was very typical--that is, for my generation--but it is becoming increasingly less typical for Americans. I would like to recall it as a model for this discussion. When I was in my twenties, I was in the Armed Forces. At that time, everyone who was male and in his twenties was in the Armed Forces. The law required that. It was a new experience, a cultural shock, as they took me to Fort Ord, CA, and cut off all my hair. I will stipulate that at that time in my life I had some hair to be cut off, unlike my present circumstance. They put me in a uniform, put me in a barracks, and changed my life. I was an employee of the U.S. Army and, as such, I received the monthly salary of $90. People could say to me, ``Well, you can't live on $90 a month.'' But the Army would have pointed out to me, if I had raised the issue, that the Army took care of all of my food, all of my clothing, the Army took care of my housing, and the Army took care of my transportation. If the Army did not take me someplace, I did not need to go there. The Army would tell me that would be the case, and that the $90 a month I had as my salary was spending money. I could use it to pay for the haircut that the Army required me to have. I could use it to buy some candy bars, or whatever movies I might want to go to. But my life was OK, because the combination of cash and Government- provided benefits together provided me with a standard of living that the Army decided was adequate for me. Why do I cite that in this discussion about taxes? It is because that is the philosophy that I think we are seeing here, where people say to us, yes, there is so much coming to the Government in the way of taxes, but look at what the Government is doing for you in return for those taxes, so that you would want to continue paying the taxes because your country needs that money in order to provide you with all of those wonderful benefits that you are getting. In the debate when Senator Dole raised the issue of possibly cutting the tax rate, the first thing we heard was, ``We can't do that because we can't afford it,'' to which I echo the question: Who is ``we''? ``We can't afford to give up the revenue that is coming from the tax rolls.'' Who is ``we''? ``We'' in this case means the average American family. The average American family currently spends more for those Government benefits, like the food, the uniforms, the barracks, and so on that I described when I was in the Army. The current American family spends more for Government than it spends for food, housing, and shelter combined. Yet, we need more money to run the Government than the family needs to feed itself, clothe itself, and house itself. The question arises, not where will the money go but who will control it? Let me give you an example. One of the things we buy with Government money is retraining programs for people who are out of work. In the State of Utah, we have a training program that is called ATC--Advanced Technology Centers. It is one of the, I think, most effective educational programs that has ever been run. I could go on at great length and describe how it works. The State pays for it. People who need it enroll in it, and they keep the cash for themselves to make the decisions with respect to their lives. They enroll in this training program not because the Federal Government is running it and the Federal Government has decided that it must be offered. They decide in terms of their own lives what kind of training they need. They come to the program, and they choose which part of the program they will take. And when they feel they have gotten what they need, they leave on their own. In other words, the decisions on retraining are made by the individuals--not by the Federal Government, or the State government. But we will take money away from them to fund some 157 Federal retraining programs that the Federal Government will then require people to go to in order to get their unemployment benefits. Which is the more efficient--where the individual makes the decision, or where the government makes the decision? The answer is very clear. The individual makes more intelligent decisions than the government does. Why? Because the individual is concerned about the effect of that decision on his or her life, and the government, by necessity, has to make these decisions for a whole range of folks. Let us talk about tax money specifically. Right now in this country real wages are stagnant, and they have been for something like 17 years. Government is not. Government has been growing in that 17-year period. Once again, we are told, ``We can't cut the amount of tax burden on the families because we can't afford it.'' Again who is ``we''? What would happen if we were to say, ``All right, we are going to allow families to keep more of what they earn and forego the government programs''? An interesting thing would happen. If you were to say to families who have children--which almost by definition means that they have financial problems--if we were to say to families that have children, ``OK, we are going to allow you to keep more of your money. What are you going to do with it?'' ``Well, we are going to spend it perhaps on a new car because with children we have to have a slightly bigger car than the one we had when we were courting. We are going to replace the washing machine. With children we wash a lot more clothes than we used to. We are going to buy more clothes for our kids. We are going to choose so on and so forth.'' I have had economists say to me, ``Why do you support the $500 per child tax credit, because it is not going to do anything in our macroeconomic models to increase savings? And the reason you have a tax cut to stimulate the economy is because you want to increase the savings rate and so on.'' I will not get into all of that macroeconomic conversation here. You are right; families will not increase their savings if you say we are going to give them a $500 per child tax credit. What are they going to do? They are going to go out and buy things for their kids. Kids are now consumer kids. There were times when they were an economic asset. Now kids are a luxury item. We have them nonetheless. But they cost us money. What is going to happen when Detroit has to build additional cars because people with families want bigger cars, when they have to build additional washing machines, when they have to produce more clothes? What is going to be the impact of that on the economy and ultimately on the amount of money that will come back to government in the form of taxes? I have seen some macroeconomic studies that say the $500 per child tax credit is going to produce a greater economic stimulus than even the cut in the capital gains tax rate. I am not sure how that all works out. Frankly, neither are they. Because the one thing we have to recognize is that we are dealing with a $7 trillion economy, and the size of the $500 per child tax credit in terms of the impact on the economy as a whole is less than 1 percent. That is true, Mr. President. If you take the size of the economy as a whole and add it up for the next 6 years--because 2002 is our target date--you are talking about roughly $50 trillion worth of economic activity in that 6-year period. The size of the $500 per child tax credit is less than $500 billion over that same 6-year period, considerably less. So it is less than 1 percent. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I proceed for an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. I would be happy to yield for a question.

Mr. BENNETT. Surely.

Mr. BENNETT. That is right. An employer who does not have a cafeteria plan would not face that option. But if by passage of this we encourage employers to move to a 125(c) plan, a cafeteria plan, I think that is all to the good. My underlying point is that the consumer does not make these choices, which I think is wrong and needs to be changed at some point when we restructure our health care system.

Mr. BENNETT. I agree with the Senator, but I do not think this legislation is the place in which to do it. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Mr. BENNETT. It is my understanding, in response to the Senator's question, that an employer would not be precluded from offering whatever he wanted. From my own experience as an employer, let me describe to the Senator what we offered to our employees. Under the cafeteria plan proposal, we say to our employees that we have x number of benefit dollars. You tell us how you want us to spend them on your behalf. And under a cafeteria plan approach--a 125(c) plan, I think it is described in the Tax Code--an employer could say, here is a mental health care plan of x amount of coverage. Here is a mental health care plan of y amount of coverage. Here is a mental health care plan of z amount of coverage. And here is a physical health care plan of x amount of coverage, and you get to pick. The employee under those circumstances could say, ``I want $10,000 of coverage in mental health care under this plan, and as a second option, I want a plan that has $1 million worth of physical coverage.'' Yes, I get, in effect, the same thing the Senator is talking about, but I have to buy two plans to do it and there is nothing in the current law or nothing in the Domenici-Wellstone amendment that would prevent an employer from offering that kind of circumstance.

Mr. BENNETT. I have listened to this debate with great interest. I find myself philosophically agreeing with the Senator from Colorado about the issue of choice, but I intend to oppose his amendment because it ignores the reality of our current health care structure and raises an issue that I have raised before and will raise again and again and again as we deal with the health care circumstance. He uses in his amendment the word ``consumers.'' The fact is that consumers do not buy health insurance. Individual consumers do not buy health insurance except in very rare cases. Companies buy health insurance. Employers buy health insurance. In my view, that is one of the main things that is wrong with our health care system, that individual consumers are not allowed choice. We are forced to take whatever our employers decide to choose on our behalf. I have said on this floor before I had a better health care plan before I came to the Senate than I have now. Why? Because the employer for whom I worked did a better job from my point of view than the U.S. Government does in choosing plans. If I were an individual consumer buying health care the way I buy an automobile, I would have chosen to bring that health care plan with me when I came from one employer to the other employer. But because of the way our health care system is structured, we are not allowed to do that. We, as individual consumers, are not allowed to make those kinds of choices. So let us understand that when the Senator from Colorado talks about consumers making choices, he is using the language of the marketplace that simply does not apply in health care. We had a long battle on this floor for many weeks over the idea of allowing individuals to set up savings accounts from which they could purchase health services. We finally had a compromise saying that we would only allow 750,000 people to do that. If we cannot find a more dramatic statement than that fact that underlies that consumers, that is, individuals, are not allowed to make these kinds of decisions, then I do not know where we would find a more dramatic statement. I would like in coming Congresses to restructure the system around medical savings accounts and around consumer choice. I think that is the ultimate solution, and if we get to that point, then I think we can consider the amendment of the Senator from Colorado. But when we are stuck with the circumstance we are stuck with now where decisions are made by somebody other than individuals, I think the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico is an appropriate one, and I intend to oppose the second-degree amendment and support the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. BENNETT. You cannot have a single plan that has that discrimination, but if under a 125(c) cafeteria plan you say we are going to offer separate plans and you buy both, you could get that effect if the employee made that kind of choice.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, in the early 1980's, a period of extraordinarily high interest rates, it was necessary for Congress to appropriate additional money to HUD for its section 8 program for new projects just then coming on line, to cover the high cost of financing. The ``financing adjustment factor'' or its acronym ``FAF'' was an additional amount of rent subsidy under the section 8 program that enabled thousands of privately owned apartments to be built and occupied by very low income families, elderly, and disabled persons. Even with tax exempt bonds issued by State and local housing finance agencies [HFA's], interest rates were so high as to require the additional FAF subsidy. In my State of Utah, the HFA issued bonds in 1982 and 1983 to finance the FHA insured mortgage loans for 16 multifamily projects assisted with project-based section 8 rent subsidies and the extra FAF subsidy. It is clear that without FAF, the projects would not have been built and some 600 units of housing for very-low-income people would not have been available. One of the conditions of FAF was that the HFA's had to agree to refund their bonds when interest rates fell. The purpose of the refunding was to reduce mortgage debt service paid by HUD through the extra-high rent subsidies. Here was a program designed to provide assistance while it was needed and then to end the subsidy when it was no longer needed. The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1988 provided that State HFA's were entitled to receive 50 percent of the savings generated by the refunding of the bonds, but the HFA's were required to use their share of the savings to provide housing assistance to persons below 50 percent of the area median income. In 1991, HUD and the Utah HFA entered into an agreement that provided for a mechanism where HUD would continue paying the high rent subsidies to the project owner, and for a trustee to collect the savings not needed to pay the new lower bond debt and to split it between HUD and the Utah HFA. The format of the agreement between HUD and the Utah HFA was commonly called a trustee sweep and, although it is the only agreement of its kind the Utah HFA has entered into, it was commonly used by HUD and other HFA's. The agreement between HUD and the Utah HFA provided that the HFA could be reimbursed for money it spent to assist very low income families. The agreement between HUD and the Utah HFA also contained a clause in which both HUD and the HFA agreed to not consent to or encourage any of the project owners to refinance their mortgage held by the Utah HFA. In 1992 and 1993, at the first date it could contractually do so, at HUD's request, the Utah Housing Finance Agency refunded its bonds and fulfilled its obligation that had been set out 10 years earlier. The stage was set for the Utah HFA to spend its own funds to help very low- income families with their housing needs, relying on the agreement with HUD that the HFA would be reimbursed for its outlay of money. The Utah HFA, relying on its agreement with HUD, spent its own funds on CHAMP, a nationally recognized homeownership program that has enabled hundreds of very low-income families, many of them single parents, to purchase inexpensive homes with CHAMP's downpayment and closing cost assistance. These hard working, but low-paid families now have what for many is their only chance of raising their children in the stable environment of the American Dream, a single-family home. Utah HFA spent its funds with the certainty that it would be reimbursed by the FAF savings from its agreement with HUD. In October 1994, HUD, in breach of the agreement with the Utah HFA, consented to the request of six project owners enabling them to refinance their projects. The owners obtained new mortgage loans and prepaid the Utah HFA loans in full. Five of the six developments are continuing to receive the additional FAF rent subsidy. The owners' refinancing was only possible by maintaining the section 8 contract rents at the very high subsidy levels, including that portion which was from the FAF. The owners will maintain the same or higher monthly debt service payments, because their new loans have a lower rate than the original loans, but with a much shorter term. HUD chose not to reduce the contract rents, but instead chose to consent to the refinancing, and appears to have breached its agreements with the Utah HFA. The result of this tragedy is that the project owners will benefit from taxpayer money originally intended to finance high- interest debt, and more recently, very low-income people under the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act. The owners will enjoy the developments free from debt at about the same time the section 8 HAP contracts expire. It is possible the owners will convert the developments to market rentals at that time, and reap an extraordinary windfall at the expense of the public, as a result of HUD's decision to maintain the high contract rents allocations to the development. Sadly, HUD could have prevented this from happening but it did not. HUD is the section 8 HAP contract administrator for the Utah projects. The Utah HFA plays no role in the HAP contracts. The HAP contacts require HUD's prior written consent to a refinancing, and HUD, through the Denver regional office, gave that consent, and perhaps even encouraged the refinancing by entering into an amendment of the HAP contract which provides for the sharing of the contract rent savings with the owner, even though HUD agreed not to encourage or consent to a voluntary repayment. Numerous documents, statutes, agreements, and good sense show that the owners were not entitled to these moneys. The HUD decisionmakers stood behind one phrase in the HUD 1987 statute, in the face of overwhelming conflicts with other defensible documentation. The HUD decisionmakers allowed form over substance to rule their decision. The HAP contracts, the Utah HFA bond indentures and official statements, the agreements between the owners and the agency, the Congressional Record, FAF appropriations, and the agreement between HUD and the Utah HFA all point to the simple fact that HUD was obligated to pay contract rents only to the extent necessary to maintain the financial viability of the developments. Nothing should have convinced HUD to donate these moneys to the owners of the developments. HUD's action in this matter frustrates the public purpose of the McKinney Act, and the original FAF appropriations. Accordingly, I have been working with HUD to see if a solution could be arranged which satisfies all parties. Back when Secretary Cisneros came before the committee I submitted questions regarding this matter. I continued to work with HUD and the result is the amendment I am proposing today. In fact, this amendment was drafted by HUD. I have gone about resolving this matter with the utmost care, involving the all parties in what, I believe, is an equitable solution.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Yes, I am pleased to.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I was particularly enlightened by the comments of the Senator from Ohio, who has a unique perspective on this particular issue. As I have noted here before, I come as the successor to Senator Jake Garn, who also has a unique perspective on this issue, and who, if he were still in the Senate, would be speaking out very strongly in favor of the committee position. We are talking about America's space effort, America's interest in exploring in space, and we made the decision, as a country, to put humans into space for a prolonged period of time at some point in the future. It makes no sense to fund a program and put humans into space and not to do the research necessary to understand what will happen to humans when they get there. That is essentially what the motion to table would do. It would say, yes, we will go ahead and fund the programs to put humans in space, but we will not fund the research to find out what will happen to them. We are told that we already know what will happen, that humans have stayed in space for 439 days. It is true that on the basis of that, we know what happens. They experience loss of bone mass and muscle deterioration, and brain and motor functioning is different. We know that space affects the spinal cord and bones, muscles and immune system, as well as the brain. But what we don't know is whether these effects are long-term, and whether the bone and muscle loss is permanent. We don't know that. Can the deterioration be counteracted in space? We don't know that. What else occurs that might not have occurred in 400 days that might occur for a longer period of time? We don't know that. We have an opportunity to find out by using animal experiments in space. Science doesn't tell us where the answers are. As we look at the great breakthroughs in science, they have come, sometimes, with hard research. They have sometimes come by complete chance, as people are looking for one thing and stumble across something else. But we do know that they never come if the research is not conducted and if people do not make an attempt to find out these answers. I won't repeat all of the arguments that have been made on the floor, because I think they have been very cogent. I do agree that the Senate is not the appropriate place to try to micromanage a scientific project when, in fact, it has been subjected to the amount of peer review and overall management guidance that this particular program has. The Senator from Ohio has quoted Dr. Ronald Merrell, the chairman of surgery from Yale, who is the scientist who has written to the NASA advisory council. I urge my colleagues to refer to those quotes. I would like to add just a few more to those which we have already seen. From the American Physiological Society, I have a letter that says: The research is scientifically necessary, important to NASA's mission, and should be allowed to proceed. The Bion research is intended to expand what we know about how space flight affects muscles, bones, balance, and performance. While human beings have spent long periods of time in space, it has not been possible to fully document the changes to their bodies. In part that is because for their own comfort and protection, astronauts take medications to counteract space sickness and do intensive exercise to overcome the harmful wasting effects of prolonged weightlessness. These countermeasures make it hard to determine exactly what is happening to their bodies. The Bion 11 and 12 experiments are intended to fill gaps in our knowledge so that we can find better ways to counteract the effects of weightlessness on the body. I found that interesting. I remember talking with our former colleague, Senator Garn, about the problems that he had both preparing for his space flight and some of the space sickness experiences he had while he was there. He took the countermeasures to which the letter that I quoted refers, and he was able to function properly. But that is something that had not occurred to me until this letter came in as a reason why we need to proceed with the animal research. From the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology, I offer the following: To kill this program just as mankind embarks on permanent presence in space would be a serious mistake. From the Association of American Universities, the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, I have this quote: We are concerned about the precedent this amendment sets in terminating research that has been peer reviewed and approved on the basis of scientific merits. That is another interesting thought where the Congress has authorized science to go forward. The science has been peer reviewed. It has been declared to be appropriate. Then for the Congress to come in and say, no, we do not like your peer reviews, we are not going to pay any attention to the scientists, we are going to override it, is, indeed, a bad precedent for us to set. Finally, from the Americans for Medical Progress Educational Foundation, this quote: Bion makes sense. (1) Scientifically it will yield critical knowledge of the effects of space travel on human physiology. This knowledge is essential for the safety of current and future space travelers; (2) Financially, $14 million of the total $33 million has already been spent. To halt in midstride would mean that all of that money was wasted. More to the point, Russia has funded the vast majority of the costs of all of these projects. If the United States was to attempt to garner this data on its own, the costs could exceed $.5 billion. In summary then, Mr. President, I am a supporter of the space program. I believe we should move ahead with our attempt to discover and explore in this final frontier. I do not believe that we should prepare the space program to send humans up into space without doing all of the appropriate research that we possibly can on the impact on human physiology of space travel. This program is the most intelligent, the most carefully charted, and the most financially responsible way for us to gather that data. For those reasons I support the committee's position. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNETT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I rise today to add an amendment to H.R. 3666 which will emphasize my concern about the multiyear delay of a scheduled GAO audit of the OFHEO, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. OFHEO is required by statute to create an effective review process to, in effect, ensure the fiscal safety and soundness of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Quite frankly, it concerned me when I was informed that OFHEO was, in turn, several years behind schedule in producing a model to oversee these two important housing enterprises. I continue to be concerned that mission creep may take hold of this regulator. Trips abroad to consult with other countries on how to regulate their housing enterprises should be curtailed until our own regulator is up and running. Therefore, it is my intent to refocus the GAO report to make sure OFHEO is still on track, and that it continues to focus all of its efforts on completing its very important mission. It is my intent to make sure that before OFHEO grows any larger, it is on track with a clear vision of its goals and responsibilities.