Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I understand. Mr. President, let me respond by saying that that is an incredibly difficult position for the Senator from Oregon to be placed in. What I would try to do is explain to my constituency in eastern Oregon what the facts are. I would point out to them that the Amtrak officials who went back from that meeting and met with the Amtrak board said, you know, we should keep this going for another year to give them a chance to work this out, and were met with a response that said, if we do not cut 10 more routes and cut out another $1.5 million or $2.6 million, whatever the number may be, Mr. Wolf, the chairman of the committee over on the House side, is going to cut everything out, because he is going to turn to us and say that Amtrak is doing what the Senator from Utah has said. Amtrak is continuing to put money into a line that costs money. And we have run out of runway. We, the Amtrak management, have run out of runway. Then I would say to them that Amtrak's inability to give you another year is not related to what they really want to do. The truth of the matter is, Amtrak knows that their ultimate future lies in a national rail system--not a Northeast rail system, but a national rail system-- and the reason it does is that we are going to, over the next 30 years, have increases in population and shifts in population around this country that cannot be accommodated merely by building more airports and highways. So for every day that we grow older as a country, the necessity for extending rail as a mode of transportation increases exponentially. Then I would say to them that we had a problem back in 1934 and 1935 and 1936 when all those Eastern Senators and their constituency said, why in God's name are we paying to build those dams out there in the West? Why are we doing that? I do not understand that. I am taking my hard-earned tax dollars to build a dam on the Columbia River, or on the whatever river, and I do not know eastern Oregon well enough to cite a specific dam, if it does affect eastern Oregon. And I would say what happened then was somebody stood up and said, look, this is in the national interest. Now, if we spend the billions of dollars to build those dams out West, if we spend the billions of dollars to do those things, what we will eventually do is our economy will grow in the East as well. We will benefit, but you are not going to see it for a day, a week, a year, 10 years, a decade. It may take several decades for that to be seen. And that is the hardest thing to convince any constituency that understandably is aggrieved and understandably has need for a service and has money being taken out of their pockets for something they do not see develop quickly. The last thing I would say to them is that those who are pushing the hardest to continue to fund Amtrak are the people who support you the most, who are the people who are saying, we should give you a year and we should give you more than that, we should give you flexibility to be able to work out compacts with the other States in the region in order to be able to use other moneys that are available to you to keep the Pioneer running. However, I do not in any way suggest that it is an easy sell. We are a nation, whether we are in the East, West, South or North, that is very much accustomed to and seeks an instant answer to a larger problem. My experience has not been in eastern Oregon, although I have been there once at a major political event, but my experience has been that when one explains in honest terms to your constituency the overall benefit that will accrue to them, in fact, sometimes they are willing to forbear them not having movement immediately. But I certainly appreciate the Senator's problem. Let me tell you something that happened to me recently. I will not mention the Senator. I got a call from the president of Amtrak saying, ``I don't know what to do. One of the States that we need help from is telling us that they want to keep their particular train going in their State. These two Senators have said basically, if you don't continue to keep this train moving, we are not going to be willing to vote for the things that need to be done,'' whether it was the half-cent gas tax, whether it was the use of rural funds, or whether it was the direct funding. And, he says, ``Then I got a call from a major political figure who holds significant office beyond Senator here in this body, saying, if you continue to fund that train which is not making money, I will not be willing to support Amtrak's long-term needs.'' It is really a catch-22 circumstance. That is why I wish we could all basically say time out, time out for a couple of years. Let us explain two things. Unless you get the Northeast corridor up and running with the new train sets, you have no section of the system that is going to be generating a profit. Unless you provide more flexibility to the States to be able to kick in and work in compacts-- you helped me in the compact amendment we had last year.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I realize I still have the floor. A number of people want to speak. Before my colleague leaves the floor, let me say that one of the things that I know he has knowledge about is how so much has changed in the last 30 years. And that is that we had plenty of room to expand with airports in certain areas. We do not have that same flexibility now. We had the ability to expand the highways in certain areas. We do not have that now. He may be right that this trust fund might in fact meet the same fate that he suggested the others had. But the bottom line is that I am a lot better off with this than I am with any other alternative that I can think of. I think that is fair. I thank him. I know he sincerely means it when he says he will listen. And I thank him very much for that. I thank my friend from Oregon. He indicated that he might have a question. I yield for a question.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am happy to answer my colleague's question. Let me first say to him that one of the reasons why he is so well-respected in this institution, and he is on both sides of the aisle, is because he has such intellectual integrity and he is so straightforward. I assure you, my answers to this or other questions will not attempt to nor could they in any way cause you trepidation. I must admit I did not know that the Senator was with Secretary Volpe at the time. It is just one more reason I admire you. You did the right thing. Maybe the projections were not what they should have been. The Senator is correct. What happened was a number of Senators on both sides of the aisle--and Members of the House--who had some significant power said, we want you to run a train into a section of the country or a section of my State where we could not justify the cost that it would entail to run the train relative to the number of people it serviced. That actually happened. What also happened was, we came along over the years and we finally told Amtrak that they, in fact, had to make some significant cuts, particularly the last 3 years. So they went out and they went after all those nonprofitable routes. I will not say with certainty because I cannot say, I do not know, to the best of my knowledge, but all of the most egregiously costly routes that were maintained are gone now--gone, in the last 3 years. I cannot say to him I know that every route that continues to exist is fully justified if you use a cost-benefit ratio in terms of the number of people riding it versus the cost of maintaining the service. Let me add one other point. I think the problem is not merely that one person gets on the train when you need 15 people to meet the cost of running the train. What we should do, and what we did in part with the landmark highway bill that we passed several years ago, the so- called ISTEA, we did what should have been done but did not quite take it far enough. We should have said to the State of West Virginia, or the State of Delaware, Montana or Utah, we should have said what ISTEA started. That is, we should say we have the transportation moneys, most of which are generated by the highway trust fund. Now, you in your State should be able to, after you meet the minimum-plus of your highway needs, you should be able to take some of your highway trust fund moneys if you choose, Governor, and State legislator, and you should be able to take that and say to Amtrak in West Virginia, ``Look, it may be nostalgic, but it is important to us, and we are willing to put up our money to you, Amtrak, so that you, Amtrak, nationally, don't have to swallow the loss of maintaining a train that goes to every junior college,'' or whatever the example you gave was. That should be a decision that the State should be able to make. Now, that State may say, ``Look, we want to be able to connect those junior colleges. It is cheaper for us to add a lane of blacktop connecting those,'' or, ``We want to put on a bus that is maintained by the West Virginia Department of Transportation,'' or whatever. And so the one piece that I don't think my colleague from Utah could have envisioned back in 1970, or thereabouts, was that you had to look at the whole transportation component. I think you did the right thing back then. But what we did not do about this and a lot of other things, like we just did on welfare--we have to give States more flexibility to be able to use their funds. What we do now is straitjacket them. Senator Roth and I have been pushing three things. In your State, Senator, you have, in addition to your State highway--I know you know this much better than I do, and I am not being solicitous. But for the purpose of people understanding our dialog here--your State, your Governor, your legislature gets, figuratively and literally speaking, a check for highways. Now, you get it in two or three different ways, sometimes, under the new highway bill. You get one that comes for interstate, you get one that comes--and then you get one for rural transportation. There is a section of the highway trust fund, the highway bill, the so-called ISTEA bill, that says if you don't want to build a highway to connect Provo to some small little town, then you can take some--only a small portion--of your highway trust fund money going to your State and you can buy buses--and this goes from the ridiculous to the sublime--or you can build bicycle paths or walking paths, but you can take some of those highway moneys. But you are not allowed to take any of that money for inner-city rail transportation. It may be that you want to connect to Las Vegas, NV, to Salt Lake City because a lot of people go that route. That is a long way, by eastern standards, but not so long by western standards. You may say, instead of us building a highway to have the economic benefit that we anticipate--although I suspect that many in Salt Lake would not want to be connected to Las Vegas, but I don't know. Assuming that was the decision. Then it seems to me that you should be able to say, and the Governor of the State of Nevada should be able to say, ``We want to take these highway trust funds and build a rail, and we want to have a train run this way. It is better for us, less damage to our environment,'' or whatever. You may say, ``No, we want to build a highway.'' So what the missing link here is, and what we are fighting so hard for is to get basically three things that will put Amtrak in the circumstance where they can be as you asserted in 1970 they would be in 3 years. Let me tick them off and I will stop and I will be happy to hear what my friend has to say. One is to say, look, there are certain basic capital improvements that are needed in areas where we know there is a need, where we know there is a ridership, where we know there is the market to get this thing up to the point where it is running a surplus. No. 1. That relates to the Northeast corridor expansion--that is, electrifying and straightening out the old routes, et cetera, and buying these train sets. By the way, these train sets are also available for the west coast because there is a growing need, and the Governors in the States of Washington, Oregon, and California say they see how it would be profitable for them to have it available. So that is one thing we do. The second thing we have to do, it seems to me, is say that in order to deal with this transportation component in the areas where we know the need exists, we should take one-half cent of a highway trust fund, which is now about 18 or 19 cents for a gasoline tax--take one-half cent and dedicate it to a trust fund for intercity rail service. That would generate $600 million a year, one-half cent. Then we would be out of the business of us having to depend on direct appropriations. And by every estimate, that would maintain the entirety of Amtrak's national capital needs per year. The third thing we should do, in my humble opinion, is we should not keep unprofitable routes on, making Amtrak have to swallow the cost of that. We know why it works that way--in order to get votes. You have to get 51 votes here for anything to happen. So we should say to the States, if you want Amtrak, where it is not profitable for them to send a train, pay them, just like you pay to build a highway, like you pay to build an airport, or for anything else. Here is how you can do that. We are going to allow you--you, the State--to have the flexibility of the funds that are available, one small portion of the funds you get, instead of building another highway. I am oversimplifying it--it costs $200,000 a year to run this train through Montana to the ski resorts, which you say generates--I think $30 million, the Governor said, a year. Now, Amtrak can make on its own $100,000 of the $200,000. You have to come up with the rest. Make a choice, Montana legislature, make a choice. Do you want to build an extra route or highway into Sun Valley, or do you want a train to continue to run? If you don't want to do it, fine, you don't have to do it. Amtrak shuts down that train. But it's flexibility, and it seems to me it is consistent with a rational national transportation policy. We are then not telling the people of Utah that they have to spend money to build rail systems out there that they don't want, where, environmentally, practically, politically, substantively, it makes more sense to build a highway. Conversely, we are saying to Amtrak, you no longer have to carry the burden of training the system to maintain systems that don't meet the economic imperative of breaking even. And so that is what this whole game plan was supposed to be. My complaint about this bill is, I say to my friend from Utah, before I yield to him, is that they have taken one of the legs out of that three-legged stool--the only way Amtrak is going to make it. It is a catch-22 situation. I think the Senator may have gone with some of us over to the Library of Congress the other night where Joseph Heller, the author of ``Catch-22,'' was one of the readers. And Trent Lott, the majority leader, read a passage from a great book series that they are doing. It was quite an interesting event. I hadn't read ``Catch-22'' since college. Hearing Heller get up there and read a passage of ``Catch-22,'' and watching him laugh at his own passages, was kind of infectious. But this is kind of a catch-22 for Amtrak. We need your vote. We need the vote from the Senators from Texas and the Senators from Montana and the Senators from Arkansas. But if you don't have a train going into your State, then you say--and I am not being critical--you say, well, why should I vote for this? Why should I vote for this? So what Amtrak has done up until now is they have been caught in that catch-22. They know if they don't keep the train going--I will pick somebody deceased, Harley Staggers--if we don't keep the train going for Harley Staggers into his district in West Virginia, they ain't going to get the money. They are not going to get enough votes to get it passed. So we blame Amtrak for continuing to run on unprofitable routes. But Amtrak management sits there and says, ``I know if I don't run that train, we don't get to run them anywhere.'' And so the bottom line, for me, is that this particular bill takes out one of the three pieces of the equation that are needed to make the assertion of the Senator from Utah in 1970, in fact, true. I think the three things that need to be done--and I will not repeat them--are things that meet the test of equity, fairness, national interest, and parochial needs, without the Federal Government demanding any State do anything they do not want to do. I would be happy--I see my friend--to yield to him. (Mr. THOMAS assumed the chair.)

Mr. BIDEN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. BIDEN. The Senator makes a good point. He and I ride Amtrak a lot. When I leave my house in the morning, I commute every day. I have clean hands here; I have a naked self-interest. I ride Amtrak every day, OK, and have been doing it for 24 years. As my mother says, ``When you are hung by your thumbs long enough, you get used to it.'' I have been riding a long time. Literally one of my rituals, I say to my friend from New Jersey, as I shave, I turn on the weather channel, because if airports are socked in, I will not get a seat on Amtrak. I better get to the station early. The converse of that is true. What happens if there is no place to go? Right now Amtrak ridership increases exponentially when there is bad weather because the airports are not flying, the airlines are not flying, or they are so delayed the business people and others cannot count on them. The funding levels in this bill that delay the upgrade are adding to the cost of air pollution, wasted time in traffic, airport delays, highway and airport maintenance costs, and safety problems. Even more foolishly, Mr. President, by indefinitely delaying the completion of the Northeast corridor improvements, this bill will indefinitely delay the day when new high-speed transit--already ordered, already funded in the same legislation--will be able to go into full operation. Not only is this a pointless waste of the new equipment, but a false economy. By postponing the day when full high-speed rail service becomes available between Boston and Washington, this bill means Amtrak will lose indefinitely the ability to generate profits, precisely the goals we have been told and we have told Amtrak they must, in fact, meet. Once lost, these profits will never be made up. Every year without profits is another year Amtrak routes suffer and go further in the red ink, another year in which Amtrak will need operating subsidies from the Congress. Instead of committing to the investment now that will start generating this income, that could support other less profitable routes, this legislation guarantees that Amtrak will remain hobbled. So the consequence and impact will be that train that our friends from Texas--and I compliment them on their effort--are trying to maintain going into Texas will be lost, that train that the Governor of Montana wants to get back in Montana will not be able to be routed because it cannot sustain itself. It is like the business of setting up electric and telephone service. It is not as profitable to run a line 8 miles down a road to a farm to light a farmhouse and a barn as it is to run a line a mile and a half into a neighborhood that has 450 homes. So what happens? The people who live in the 450-home neighborhood end up subsidizing the person who lives out there on the farm. That is what we are about as a Nation. That is why, for example, we subsidize water in the West. My mother pays her taxes and I pay my taxes in the East so that somebody else's mother can have a glass of water in Arizona or in southern California or in many of the Rocky Mountain area States that are fed by the Colorado River, and the billions of dollars we have spent on dams. I do not complain about that. That is not a complaint. It is an observation. That is what we are supposed to do. We are one Nation. We are one Nation and different areas of the Nation have different needs. If the taxpayer of the United States stops subsidizing, or never subsidized in the first place, what was done to the Colorado River, there would not be 32 million people in California.

Mr. BIDEN. I am delighted to yield.

Mr. BIDEN. I would agree fully. The Senator from New Jersey, since he has been here--I am not being solicitous here--has been a leader on a number of issues, but two in particular, on environmental issues, and on this issue of transportation. That image, of which is literally true, of 7,500 fully loaded 757's is something I hope everybody kind of keeps in their minds. But put it another way. I ask my colleagues from other States that do not have the same congestion problems, OK, Amtrak goes belly up. Who do you think is going to come after your highway money? Who do you think is coming after your highway money then? Do you think we are going to sit around and say, OK, we are just going to go to gridlock in the East? We are just not going to do anything? We are going to have a new battle. So the money you think you are benefiting from by not spending on Amtrak and putting more money in the highways in States that do not have Amtrak because we are not competing for as many of those dollars with you, we will have to if it changes. What formula will you be able to draft that in fact will not justify our getting the significantly larger amount of the highway trust fund moneys? We are talking about a third of the Nation's population. This is a big deal. We are not asking for anything that we are not entitled to, that does not make good public policy, that is not in the national interest, and that is not anything any other mode of transportation is not already getting. But, again, keep that image in mind. I just see it now, folks, those 7,500 fully loaded 757's bouncing around annually beyond what we have now. Try to get home from National Airport when you are going home for the weekend to whatever State you are from.

Mr. BIDEN. With a ``B,'' billion.

Mr. BIDEN. That is right.

Mr. BIDEN. I will be glad to.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me begin by saying that the criticisms I am about to make are in no way directed at the chairman of the full committee and the ranking member of the subcommittee. I think they share my views on these issues. I am under no illusions; the chairman said earlier that the Senate had straitjacketed the committee in many ways and the House had stiffed the committee in other ways, that what we were able to do here on the Senate side in conference was not made extremely difficult. I understand that. I rise today to point out what I believe to be some serious flaws in this legislation. This Transportation appropriations bill, I am sorry to say, is unacceptable. I do not want to mislead my colleagues. I am not sure there was a request for a time agreement, but I indicated to floor staff if there was I would object, and to be completely blunt with my two colleagues, I have never engaged in a filibuster in my 23 years, almost 24 years in the Senate, and I am, quite frankly, weighing as I speak and my staff talks whether or not there would be any utility in my doing that. The chairman makes a very important point relative to the continuing resolution. My fear and concern is that even were I successful in keeping this bill from passing, the continuing resolution would, in effect, include the numbers that, in fact, are the ones that disturb me the most about the bill. So to the extent that I do not want to mess up their schedules and be straightforward with them, which is what I am going to do, I would just suggest they stay tuned for another few minutes. I will, quite frankly, make that judgment and determine whether to do what I have never done before, to engage in what we say is extended debate. Let me direct my comments this afternoon to what I think are the most serious flaws in this legislation. First, I think this appropriations bill badly fumbles the task of putting our Nation's passenger rail service, Amtrak, on its feet, earning operating income and ending its operating subsidies. I want to remind you that is the goal we all signed on to--we, the Congress. We said that our goal is, in the Senate and the House, that Amtrak will be able to operate without subsidies by the year 2002, or, put another way, we are not going to help them after that. Implicit in setting that goal--and I remember how reluctant some of us were to agree to that goal because there is no other major passenger rail service in the world that does not have some government subsidy, none that I am aware of. It always surprises me; my friends in my home State, my friends in the Senate will be somewhere on business or pleasure that takes them to another country, and they will come back and they will talk about, gosh, I was on that bullet train in Japan, or, gosh, I was on the train in Germany, or, gosh, I was on that train in Sweden. It is remarkable. They are clean and they are fast and they are on time. Why can't we have that here? The reason we do not have it is we do not support the passenger rail service like they do in other countries. Now, there are a lot of reasons we do not do that, not the least of which is our industries, like the cement industry, like the blacktop industry, the trucking industry, see rail as a threat. They do not see it as an adjunct to the economic growth and vitality of the Nation. They see it as a threat. So we have had incredible difficulty doing what other countries have done, and that is to look at transportation as a whole, not look at transportation as airplanes and highways but looking at the entire component of what constitutes transportation--passenger transportation and freight transportation in this country. I know Senator Lautenberg has labored mightily, and I mean that literally, to try to convince people--along with Senator Moynihan, before he went over to the Finance Committee--that we have to look at transportation in a different way than we have up to now, thinking only in terms of highways. There is a lot of money in it, and for the life of me I cannot understand why the highway interests in this country, which we support by hundreds of millions of dollars--it is not as if we are against highways if you are for mass transit or you are for mass transit passenger service. They have fought tooth and nail anything that spends any of our highway trust fund moneys or any moneys for anything other than laying concrete and blacktop. Now, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that in certain parts of our country we cannot lay much more concrete and blacktop. In the Northeast corridor, from Richmond up to Boston, there is not a whole lot more land available to accommodate the increased traffic patterns. What do we do, make I-95 20 lanes wide? By the way, you think I am joking. In some places, I-95 is already 10 lanes wide. Where are we going to accommodate this extra movement of people when Amtrak is no longer available in our corridor? And also, what happens when, as we repeatedly see happening, there is a constant cutback in Amtrak into rural areas and into States in the Midwest and the Northwest that profited very much from the access to Amtrak? It is a funny thing, it seems, that old expression of ``the more things change, the more they remain the same.'' I used to be a county councilman in 1970 in our State's largest county before I was elected to the Senate. I was a big booster in the late 1960's and 1970 when I was a council person, for mass transportation, because it was obvious at that time the county I lived in, was the fastest growing county in America. As a matter of fact, ``Candid Camera,'' Allen Funt's ``Candid Camera,'' did a whole program on taking the four-lane highway that connected Pennsylvania and Delaware at the Pennsylvania-Delaware border at the northern part of the county and on the Pennsylvania side as they crossed into Delaware put up a giant sign with the permission of the highway department: ``Sorry, Delaware Closed Today,'' and people were actually stopping. People actually stopped. It was a ``Candid Camera'' stunt. So, in the midst of all of that, some of us, myself in particular, started to turn toward trying to deal with mass transit, a minor thing. We are talking about 450,000 people in the county. It is not like we are talking about--there are 10 counties in New Jersey bigger than that and there are probably 20 cities bigger than that. And so we are not talking about a vast number of people in relative terms in relation to other places. I found something interesting. This is the part about ``the more things change, the more they remain the same.'' I would be told that the bus service--we had no rail service--the bus service we have, that is, servicing the community, is losing money. And so when it starts to lose money, what we do is we go out and cut out a route. Let us assume for the sake of discussion there were 50 bus routes, and the system is losing money. They say, well, we have to cut some expenditures here, and so we are going to cut out two routes. Now, assume it had 50 routes and 100,000 people getting on the bus. If you cut out two routes, you would think that you would have, then, a commensurate reduction in the amount of ridership. But that is not how it works. When you cut out two routes, twice as many people who rode those routes stopped taking the bus because the choices are diminished, not just the people who rode that one route. What happens is, it has a geometric impact. As you cut a piece in terms of your operation, what you do is you cut a much larger piece in terms of ridership. That is how it works. So, here we are. In the name of saving Amtrak, we put Amtrak's leadership in a position of having to make significant operational cuts in service. So, when they cut the train that goes through Montana to the State of Washington, what do they do? They cut alternatives, so that means fewer people ride the train in Illinois as well. It means fewer people ride the train in Indiana. It increases in geometrical proportion to the cut that is made. It also has a very serious political impact. Then the Senators from Montana or the Senators from other States that got cut say, ``What interest do I have in funding this Amtrak thing, it does not service my State anymore?'' And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. There was one place, one section in the National Passenger Rail Service System that, if we improved it, could make money, money enough to, in turn, through Amtrak, subsidize other Amtrak routes so that you would be able to, without coming back to the Government or the taxpayers, say, OK, we can keep that train going through Montana because Amtrak management says we make a surplus in the trains that run from Boston to Washington. That was part of the whole deal we made here. We said, OK, we will run the risk of having this whole passenger rail service go belly up by the year 2000 by committing not to have any more subsidies. But we need to do some things in the interim to put the system in a position to be able to make it. So what did we do? In this legislation we went out and we slashed, by a significant amount, the amount of money that would be available to further modernize the corridor, as they call it, between New York and Boston. What has happened is that Amtrak is an electrified system. What has happened, once you get above New York City--actually in New Haven, CT-- you have to switch the trains you use. The tracks are old and some of the bridges need to be repaired and some of the curves have to be straightened out, et cetera, because it is not electrified. So we made a deal. We said, OK, we are going to electrify the whole system so it is unified all the way along that megalopolis, and we said we are going to bring in modern high-speed trains that allow us to compete, in fact, with air transportation and road transportation between Boston and Washington. We even picked out the trains we were going to purchase. And because the projections were that ridership would be up because we had improved the number and type of trains that were being used, so that we would generate enough capital, and we would generate enough money to operate as well as maintain the system. And we would have money left over to go out and continue the train in Texas which is being cut, continue the train in Louisiana which is being cut, in Montana, et cetera, so we could build the system. By the way, obviously, I am sure some are sitting there, willing and ready, and I do not blame them, to make the ad hominem argument, which is: Obviously, Joe Biden wants this because it affects the Northeast corridor where he lives. It affects his State employment, affects his State's economy, it affects the whole region. That is true. But look beyond that. Notwithstanding the fact that it positively affects my State and the Northeast corridor, it is the only salvation for the rest of the system. We can duplicate that process over time on the west coast. So we can have the capability of similarly moving people rapidly, with high speed, on the west coast. We do not need quite as much improvement because you do not have to electrify the system, and so on and so forth. What have we done? We have done what we used to do in the county council days. In order to save money, allegedly, we will, by this legislation, force Amtrak to make further cuts, further reducing Amtrak's capability to meet the goal which we all set and insist that they be able to meet by the year 2002. We are guaranteeing, unless we get a supplemental or defeat this or change the number that is in this, we are guaranteeing that Amtrak cannot meet the goal. It is a little bit like saying to someone you are coaching on the track team who has great potential: Look, I will tell you what we are going to do. You do not have much money. You have to pay me my salary, and I know you don't have enough money to have me train you, and you have 9-second capability in the hundred meter, which is world class. But I will tell you, in order to save money, you have to wear old Keds sneakers. You cannot wear shoes that, in fact, are the kind that are light, lightweight, modern and functional. By the way, we cannot afford starting blocks. So I am going to continue to coach you if you can break the record. But, in order for you to get me as a coach, what you have to do is we have to cut out these frills--the frills meaning your shoes and the starting blocks-- guaranteeing you will never get out of the blocks in order to keep me as your coach, because you never get to the number, you can never get to the speed, you can never get to the time I am going to be satisfied with in order to be able to continue to coach you. So why start the process in the first place? That is kind of where we are now. I mean, the idea that the rail connection between Boston, Washington, and New York, will basically have to be put on hold--by the way, we need to up the authorization in this bill for the Northeast corridor to be able to keep Amtrak on track, which is about $17 million in outlays, I believe that is the number, to be spent next year to continue to complete the project. I know my colleagues understand all this Senate jargon, congressional jargon, but the bottom line is, unless the number is higher, we do not have $17 million to do what needs to be done to keep the Northeast corridor project on time and be able to get us in a position where we can buy those train sets and where we can in fact begin to generate the revenue you need in order to meet the objective of being free of subsidies by the year 2002. Let me point out one other thing that has been pointed out repeatedly by Senator Lautenberg. If you deal with this fairly and you measure ``the Government subsidies,'' both in direct expenditures and in tax expenditures that go for highways, that go for the airlines and go for mass transit, Amtrak gets subsidized less. For example, all you may not realize, when you pay for your plane ticket, the Government subsidizes an air traffic controller that makes sure you can land or not land, it subsidizes the building of that airport and runway, it subsidizes that control tower. The airline does not pay for that. They pay part of it, but they do not pay anywhere near the cost of it. It is a significant subsidy. So all the airlines are out there touting that this is a subsidy to-- I should not say that--touting this is a subsidy to Amtrak, ``Why should we pay to subsidize a person's ticket, a woman who wants to get on a train in Gainesville, FL, and go to Raleigh, NC? Why should we do that?" I ask the reciprocal question: Why should we do that for someone getting on an airplane? The subsidy is greater for the airline industry than it is for the passenger rail service, and the same way with highways. We have a highway trust fund that pays for the laying of the concrete and the putting up of the barriers, et cetera, but it does not pay for all those cops that are out there, it does not pay for all those maintenance crews, it does not pay for the accidents when they occur, it does not pay for a lot of things. So we subsidize beyond-- beyond--what we, in fact, collect in the gasoline tax for the highway system. Why is it we apply a different standard when we are talking about the ``subsidies for passenger rail service?'' I will tell you why. Because there are a lot of people who make a lot of money and have a lot of influence down here who, in fact--and they are good people--who, in fact, make the concrete that gets poured on the highways. If you are going to spend money on a railroad, you are not pouring concrete on a highway. That is how they view it. A lot of people out there make an awful lot of money in the trucking industry. I suggest to you all that you walk down the corridor connecting the House and the Senate Chambers, and there are political cartoons that are on display, historical cartoons on display--I believe it is on the first floor--that show cartoons from the days of the turn of the century. Some of them you will remember from your grade school and high school civic books where they have the pictures of the bloated Senators, like blimps, representing the big mega interests, the oil cartels and the railroad interests and the rest. This is an ongoing fight. This is money; this is power. This is a big deal to a lot of different people. They do not think of the national interest. What they are thinking of--and it is human nature--is their own particular selfish interests. Look, how many railroads at the turn of the century were happy to see automobiles come into existence, and then trucks? They did everything in the world to keep trucks and highways from being built, because they knew if you were able to put this stuff on the back of a truck and cart it down the highway, then they did not have the cargo going on top of a rail car where they were charging a fee to send it to folks. The folks who owned the railroads did not want that, and here we have come full circle. The folks who pour the concrete, the folks who make the blacktop, the folks who put up the reflectors on the highways do not want rail passenger service. They don't want it, because they view it as somehow that will affect how many more highways they build. In a sense, it will. If we, in fact, have Amtrak go belly up in the Northeast corridor, we are going to have to build other lanes of I-95-- not figuratively, literally--we are going to have to build more lanes, unless you want to get on 95 and go bumper to bumper from Washington to New York, or maybe you do not want to go to New York anymore, but that is what it is going to take. You will have to do that. You will have a few people make a whole lot of money, but you sure won't help the environment. You are going to pollute the environment more. You sure won't help in terms of safety, and you sure won't help in terms of public policy, and I do not know why we cannot get that through to people, why that doesn't resonate. I realize we have a love affair with the automobile. I have a love affair with my automobile. I have a 1967 Corvette I had restored. Next to my kids--maybe my dog comes next--I love it. So I have a love affair with my car, too, but that does not mean I also cannot be rational in how I am going to approach what are the environmental and transportation needs for this country. So what happens here? What happens here is that we are in a circumstance where--and I have not even mentioned yet the cuts to the 28 States that are small States in highway trust fund moneys. You have tens of millions of people going through my little old State of Delaware on I-95, and you just got our transportation money, highway money, too. You give us a nice double whammy here. I mean ``you'' in an editorial sense. The appropriations bill makes sure that we diminish the prospects of Amtrak, which is critically important to my region, and I think to the Nation. By the way, you are going to force us to have to build more highways, and then you turn around and say, ``By the way, we're not going to give you as much in highways.'' We are going to get less money this year with a $400 million increase in expenditures than we did last year with a highway bill that was $400 million less. Talk about sharing in the wealth. There is a lot of wealth to be shared, but the small States, 28 States, are not sharing this. Without belaboring the point about the highways, it is not long ago the Senate passed its version of the Transportation appropriations bill. Under the leadership of Senators Lautenberg and Hatfield, that bill provided funding for Amtrak's capital function and important Northeast corridor improvement projects at appropriated levels. Some of my colleagues may recall, and I know that I do, that my good friend, Senator McCain from Arizona, offered an amendment to return to the completely inadequate funding levels that Amtrak had in the House version of the bill, which is what we are closer to now in this version. Specifically, his amendment would have cut the Northeast corridor funding to zero from $200 million in the Senate bill and would have cut overall capital spending in half from $250 million in the Senate bill down to $120 million. Mr. President, we had what I would like to think was a pretty good exchange of views on the role of passenger rail in our Nation's transportation system and how our Federal system of Government allocates the many benefits and burdens shared by the citizens of all 50 States. Senator McCain's proposal in the end was defeated by 82 to 17--82 to 17--and that was an overwhelming endorsement of the funding levels provided for Amtrak by the Senate in its version of the bill. But despite the best efforts of Senator Lautenberg, this conference report was a giant step backward toward the wholly inadequate numbers of the House bill, which is what Senator McCain was pushing. The bill before us today is not just a step backward, it is a step on a very slippery slope toward the demise of our country's passenger rail system. Under the mistaken assumption that a penny cut from Amtrak's investment functions somehow is a penny saved, this bill actually offers us the formula for failure, as I referenced earlier, by cutting important investment functions. Mr. President, the legislation actually reduces the efficiency of the remaining dollars spent on Amtrak. Good business practice that Congress has demanded of Amtrak requires investment in equipment and services that will increase ridership, increase revenues and increase Amtrak's ability to become self-sufficient when it comes to its operating expenditures. Amtrak has undertaken just such an investment program, and the Northeast corridor improvement project is a major portion of it. By straightening out the right-of-ways, by strengthening bridges and overpasses, by extending electrification along the route between Boston and Washington, this project is going to make possible the inauguration of the most modern, high-speed rail connections along one of the country's most populous transportation corridors--and be able to be transferred, I might add, as well to the west coast. All over the globe other advanced economies and some not so advanced are also providing such services to their citizens. This country is finally approaching the standard set elsewhere for clean air, fuel efficiency, and convenient passenger rail service that can take some of the load off the rest of our overburdened transportation system. Mr. President, I wonder if anyone really thinks that the answers to our transportation problems lie in more asphalt, lie in more concrete, increasing our dependency on an already overloaded highway system in significant sectors of the country? If the improvements to Amtrak's Northeast corridor were fully funded and completed, it would remove 325,000 drivers from the crowded I-95 corridor--325,000. That does not even raise the issue of, if it goes under, how many people will it add to that corridor. Herein lies the problem. Highway guys do not like that, to pull a third of a million people off I-95. Your maintenance is down, you do not have to pour as much concrete, you do not have to expand as much, though the air would be cleaner, there will be fewer accidents, there will be less overall cost to the economy, and there will be greater comfort and efficiency. That is what it is about. Are we prepared to undertake the construction of more expensive airports? My friend from New Jersey and I are bordering States. One of the things they are trying to figure out in South Jersey and Northern Delaware is, as the Philadelphia airport continues to get overcrowded, what relief airports are we going to build? Where are we going to build other airports? How congested can the air get in a Delaware valley that is 10 million people? Think of what it is for my colleague from New Jersey in the northern part of his State where there is probably closer to 15 million. I do not know what the number is, but it is bigger than the Delaware valley. Where do you go? How many airplanes can you circle? Come with me on a Friday night, sit out in my yard, which is just 22 miles from the Philadelphia airport. It looks like fireflies lined up as far as the eye can see, wasting fuel, wasting time, increasing dangers, because there is not enough space to be able to land all those planes at one time. So what are we going to do? Are we going to build more airports? Let me tell you, that will cost you more than building more Amtrak capability. What it also does--concrete guys are happy. There is an awful lot of concrete in those airports, an awful lot of concrete. So I just do not understand where people think this is going to go. I do not know where they think our traffic and control systems--how many more flights can they take, especially now? If you live in the middle of Montana or the middle of Nebraska or the middle of other parts of other big States, yeah, there is all kinds of room for this; there are not many people, but all kinds of room for more airports. But they do not need the airports there. They need the airports where we are. So what you are saying to us on the west coast and the east coast and the congested areas is, you are saying, ``OK. Pick your poison, Biden.'' We either are going to congest the airways or we are going to congest the highways. We are going to increase the safety risk. Which do you want? I say, you are giving me a Hobson's choice. It is a false choice. Have those systems in place, improve them--they will probably have to be expanded anyway--but give us also another alternative, a clean alternative, an economical alternative, in relative terms. Allow us to have rail transportation which will benefit the whole country. As the distinguished ranking member of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee understands, and as Senator Lautenberg likes to remind us, annual ridership on Amtrak's Northeast corridor alone is equivalent to 7,500 fully loaded 757 jets. I did not know that number until he raised it. But think of that. Just the passengers in the Northeast corridor. Understand, the passengers in the Northeast corridor are going, in the Northeast, to either Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton, Camden, et cetera.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, the story of our failure to foresee--and prevent--the crack cocaine epidemic is one of the most significant public policy mistakes in modern history. Although warning signs of an outbreak flared over several years, few took action until it was too late. We now face similar warning signs with another drug--methamphetamine. Without swift action now, history may repeat itself. In July, Senator Hatch and I, along with Senators Feinstein, Feingold, Daschle, Grassley, Specter, Harkin, Wyden, D'Amato, Kyl, Reid, Ashcroft, McCain, and DeWine introduced legislation to address this new emerging drug epidemic before it is too late. Within the past few years the production and use of methamphetamine have risen dramatically. Newspaper and media reports over the past few months have highlighted these increases. I have been tracking this development and pushing legislation to increase Federal penalties and strengthen Federal laws against methamphetamine production, trafficking, and use since 1990. And what I and others have found is alarming: From 1991 through 1994 methamphetamine related emergency room episodes increased 256 percent--the increase from 1993 to 1994 alone was 75 percent--with more than 17,000 people overdosing and being brought to the emergency room because of methamphetamine. A survey of high school seniors, which only measures the use of ``ice''--a fraction of the methamphetamine market--found that in 1995 86,000 12th graders had used ice in the past year, 39,000 had used it in the past month, and 3,600 reported using ice daily. This same survey found that only 54 percent of high school seniors perceived great risk in trying ice--down from 62 percent in 1990. And 27 percent of these children said it would be easy for them to get ice if they wanted it. The cause for concern over a methamphetamine epidemic is further fueled by drug-related violence--again something we saw during the crack era--that we can expect to flourish with methamphetamine as well. Putting the problem in perspective, drug experts claim that ``ice surpasses PCP in inducing violent behavior.'' In addition to the violence--both random and irrational--associated with methamphetamine users, there is also the enormous problem of violence among methamphetamine traffickers and the environmental and life-threatening conditions endemic in the clandestine labs where methamphetamine is produced. The bill the Senate is considering addresses all of the dangers of methamphetamine and takes bold actions to stop this potential epidemic in its tracks. Specifically, the Hatch-Biden methamphetamine enforcement bill will take six major steps toward cracking down on methamphetamine production, trafficking, and use, particularly use by the most vulnerable population threatened by this drug--our young people. First and foremost, we increase penalties for possessing and trafficking in methamphetamine. Second, we crack down on methamphetamine producers and traffickers by increasing the penalties for the illicit possession and trafficking of the precursor chemicals and equipment used to manufacture methamphetamine. Third, we increase the reporting requirements and restrictions on the legitimate sales of products containing these precursor chemicals in order to prevent their diversion, and we impose even greater requirements on all firms which sell these product by mail. This includes the use of civil penalties and injunctions to stop ``legitimate'' firms from recklessly providing precursor chemicals to methamphetamine manufacturers. Fourth, we address the international nature of methamphetamine manufacture and trafficking by coordinating international enforcement efforts and strengthening provisions against the illegal importation of methamphetamine and precursor chemicals. Fifth, we ensure that methamphetamine manufacturers who endanger the life on any individual or endanger the environment while making methamphetamine will receive enhanced prison sentences. Finally, we require Federal, State, and local law enforcement and public health officials to stay ahead of any potential growth in the methamphetamine epidemic by creating national working groups on protecting the public from the dangers of methamphetamine production, trafficking, and abuse. The Hatch-Biden bill addresses all of these needs with a fair balance between the needs of manufacturers and consumers of legitimate products which contain methamphetamine precursor chemicals and the need to protect the public by instituting harsh penalties for any and all methamphetamine-related activities. This legislation is the crucial, comprehensive tool we need to stay ahead of the methamphetamine epidemic and to avoid the mistakes made during the early stages of the crack-cocaine explosion. I want to thank Senator Hatch and my other colleagues who share my desire to move now on the problem of methamphetamine. I also want to thank the Clinton administration, which also was determined to act now on this issue and worked with us in developing several of the provisions in this bill. I urge all my colleagues to join us in protecting our children and our society from the devastations of methamphetamine by supporting this vital legislation.

Mr. BIDEN

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

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to lay aside the pending amendment.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, let me get right to the point. What I am attempting to do here, so I do not confuse my colleagues who do not have the opportunity or requirement to deal with the drug issue as much as I do, I am attempting to change the schedule--that is the term of art--of these two particular drugs, Rohypnol, and another drug which is referred to as ``Special K,'' and I will get into this in a minute. They are now the lowest classified drug that you are not able to use. I want to move them up into the highest classification, which make them a schedule 1 drug, the most dangerous drugs that are out there. When you change the schedule, you change all the resources of the Government as to how much attention they pay to the illicit use of these drugs. Now, the best time, Mr. President, to target a new drug which is coming on to the scene is at the front end. For example, I remember Senator Moynihan in the early 1980's standing on the floor of the Senate and saying, ``Hey, look, there is a new drug called crack cocaine.'' It had not been around before. ``There is a new drug called crack cocaine that is being used heavily in the Bahamas. We are beginning to see it being imported in New York. We really should set a priority to deal with that drug.'' Now, that is one of the whole purposes for drug strategy: You pick priorities and say, ``Look, we will focus on this drug or that drug.'' I know the Presiding Officer knows what happened. He knew in Utah long before they found out in Iowa, and they have not found out yet in Delaware, but they knew before him in California about a thing called methamph- etamines--``meth.'' What most people do not know, but the distinguished Presiding Officer knows, is that there are more drive-by shootings in Salt Lake City than any other major city in the country-- one of finest cities, lowest crime rates in the country. What happened? Along came this drug called ``ice,'' or methamphetamine. It is a drug that is manufactured, that has properties that are similar in effect and that are more intense than cocaine. All of a sudden, the gangs that were manufacturing this synthetic drug, the Bloods and Crips in Southern California--things got too hot for them there, so they literally moved to Utah. Then things got too hot for them in Utah, and they moved up into Montana and Idaho. Now they have moved, literally, into Iowa, which is a major producing State now. So what is happening then? It is like a wave. See, ``ice'' started in Hawaii, and we had notice of it. I have been hollering about it for 6 years now. But we did not focus on it. We always wait until the wave hits us before we focus on it. Then it hit California, and literally, you could see it working its way across America. Now, the reason I bother to say that is that when we have moved before an abuse of a particular drug has overwhelmed our communities, we have been successful. The advantages of moving early are clear. There are fewer pushers trafficking in that drug, and, most important, there are fewer dependencies, fewer people dependent on the drug, so there are fewer people needing to go out and push the drug they are dependent on to make the money to consume the drug. Literally, we can get it before the networks are in place. There are organized networks, and there are networks that come about as a consequence of the consumption, because the people consuming need to make money to continue to consume their drugs. So what do they do? They make a deal with their pusher and say, ``I will get you two more customers.'' It is kind of like the old pyramid scheme. But the problem is, once the pyramid has been built, we play heck with trying to break it up at that point. So today, we are tracking the arrival of two new drugs, Rohypnol, and a drug called ``Special K''--I will get into that in a moment--as they begin their slow popularity across the country and begin to show extreme popularity in several States. So today--now--is the time to act on trying to snuff them out before they become too popular. There is a heightened urgency because of one stark fact. These new drugs--the one with the slang name ``Special K,'' which is an animal tranquilizer, I might add, and Rohypnol, which is a different drug--are being used primarily by our children. Now, all of a sudden, everyone from the administration to the Republican-controlled Congress, including Democrats in the Congress, has discovered that drug use among youth is up. I came to the floor of the U.S. Senate a year and a half ago and laid out the facts, figures, numbers, and even wrote a report that you all got stuck on your desk. Understandably, like most reports, none of us read them. In the report, I start off saying, ``Our Nation has already seen the first signs of a trend that chills every parent--a rising drug use among young children. This is the proper focus of our national crime debate in the months ahead.'' That was a year and a half ago. I laid out all the reasons why it was there. To anybody involved in the drug problem, dealing with the drug issue, they are not surprised by the figures. But all of a sudden, in this election year, Democrats and Republicans alike have found that we have a problem with youth violence and a problem with drug abuse among our young. Well, I am here to tell you all again that we have an additional problem. We have an additional problem. There are two particular drugs that are gaining vast popularity among young people, and they have an incredibly negative effect, which I will describe in a moment, and we are not targeting them. They are schedule 4 drugs, which means they are at the bottom of the heap. They are viewed as the least dangerous of all the things out there. As a consequence of that, Mr. President, what happens is, local police don't focus on them, Federal resources don't focus on them, parents don't pay attention to them, nobody looks at them because they are the thing that is the least problematic. Well, these two are incredibly pernicious. So that is why I am calling on the Senate to pass legislation to make both of these drugs subject to much stricter regulation. This can be accomplished by moving these drugs to a different schedule under the Federal Controlled Substance Act. I realize that sounds bureaucratic. But it is a big deal, how you schedule the drug. This is not a step, I might add, to be taken lightly, because there is a regulatory procedure in place for scheduling controlled substances. Unfortunately, this regulatory procedure can take years to accomplish and change. It has to be done now. It has to be done now. In the past decade--to underscore my point here--Congress has taken legislative action by going around or over the bureaucratic procedure to reschedule drugs. Guess what? It has worked. In 1984, Mr. President, I came to the floor of the Senate and I said, ``Hey, look, what I am hearing from all the drug experts in the country is that Quaaludes are being abused in proportions that we should be very worried about. They are on the verge of becoming an epidemic that, in fact, will impact upon young people.'' And so, with the help of many of my colleagues, we passed a law to make Quaaludes, a previously medically approved sedative, a controlled substance, a schedule 3 controlled substance. Now, Mr. President, in the decade since that legislation took effect, Quaalude abuse has dropped significantly. Emergency room Quaalude overdoses--the best way to measure abuse is by the overdoses in the hospital emergency rooms--are down 80 percent. It worked; they are down 80 percent from 1984 to 1994. In legislation I sponsored, which was passed as part of the 1990 Crime Control Act, steroids were reclassified as a schedule 3 substance, scheduling them to more strict controls. I see my friend from Florida on the floor. He has been deeply involved in these drug abuse issues. He can tell you that we were hearing from every athletic director, we were hearing from every coach, we were hearing from schoolteachers, we were hearing about this incredible abuse of steroids. All you had to do was pick up any magazine, from Sports Illustrated to Time magazine, several years ago, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, and they are saying, ``Wow, this is a big-deal problem.'' It was a big-deal problem. So we rescheduled the drug. Since we rescheduled the drug, subjecting it to stricter regulation, the annual use of steroids is down 42 percent in the first 2 years after enacting this legislation. Mr. President, I just cite this to point out to the skeptics--like in California the referendum for the use of marijuana for medical uses--to the people who have given up--whether it is William Buckley, Mayor Schmoke, George Shultz, or whoever, who are talking about legalization--the reason they are giving up on that stuff is not because they think it is good to legalize it, but they don't think we can do anything about the problem. Well, we can. It is like any disease. It is like anything, from breast cancer to any other disease you can name, the earlier you detect it, the quicker you act on it before it spreads, the better your chances are of dealing with it. It seems to me, Mr. President, it is time to legislate stricter controls for Rohypnol and ``Special K.'' The record-high abuse rates of the 1970's were accompanied by a unique drug culture, signified by the presence of what used to be called ``club drugs.'' By a club drug, I mean a drug popular with youth and young adults who frequent dance clubs and often mix drugs with alcohol and other substances. Quaaludes are one of those club drugs. That is the manner in which they were consumed because it enhanced the high and you were very mellow. Recently club drugs have made a resurgence in popularity, and they are now showing up in both bars and what they call ``raves.'' For some of you who are not as old as I am, ``raves'' are all-night dance marathons popular with teenagers. Club drugs are typified by the way they have suddenly gained popularity and have become a drug of choice. They have become trendy among youth, and often these drugs are legally manufactured, but are being used by youth in ways unintended by the manufacturer and unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration. Rohypnol and ``Special K'' are two of the drugs which have recently hit the youth scene and quickly become popular. Both of these drugs are very dangerous drugs whose current legal status does not reflect the dangers inherent in their abuse. Rohypnol abuse was first documented in the United States in 1993. Although abuse was first noted in southern Florida, in the past 2 years abuse has spread rapidly, and Rohypnol activity has been reported in more than 30 States. Without rapid and strong Government action, I predict that this abuse will continue. It will spread. Teenagers find Rohypnol an attractive drug for a number of reasons. Frighteningly, one of the major reasons that youth do not see Rohypnol as a dangerous drug is because it has legitimate medical use in some areas of the world, and they mistakenly believe that if they are taking that drug in its original packaging form, the manufacturer indicates that it is both safe and unadulterated. They think, ``Well, how can that hurt me? Why is that a problem?'' In addition, there are few existing means for testing and prosecuting youth for Rohypnol possession and intoxication. The combination of Rohypnol and alcohol makes it possible for a young person to feel very intoxicated while remaining under the legal blood-alcohol level for driving. That is one of the reasons for its popularity. In addition to gaining attention for the increasing rate of abuse, Rohypnol has also been the focus of another social problem, a particularly ugly crime: that is what is referred to as date rape. In fact, in many areas and in a number of newspaper accounts, Rohypnol is referred to as the ``date rape drug.'' Let me explain why. This connection between Rohypnol and rape is due to the drug's disinhibitory effects and its likelihood of causing amnesia when it is taken with alcohol. Unfortunately, the amnesia effect is one of the reasons why many people who abuse Rohypnol are attracted to it. It is commonly reported that people taking Rohypnol in combination with alcohol typically have blackouts and memory losses that last 8 to 24 hours. The novelty of the blackouts attract youth, particularly youth who are combining drugs and alcohol. In addition, this has led to it being referred to as the ``forget me pill'' or the ``forget pill.'' Even more frightening, many of the people are finding the drug attractive as a way of creating blackouts in other people. So we have increasing accounts of unscrupulous males in almost every instance literally--back in our day you would hear the phrase, or my grandfather used to talk about a Mickey Finn--spiking somebody's drink. There is a real reward when a young man spikes a drink of a young woman: (a) she becomes much more uninhibited; and, (b) when he takes advantage of her, rapes her, has sex with her, molests her, she is incapable of remembering with enough specificity to prosecute him that he is the one. Let me give you an example. She will be able to remember that she has been violated. So the damage is done physically and psychologically. But when in a courtroom being asked by a cross-examining defense attorney, ``Well, tell me where you were exactly. Tell me what he was wearing. Tell me what room you were in.'' All of the things that go to credibility, she is incapable of remembering. So it has become increasingly popular to abuse young women. That is why they call it--not just young women, any woman. But because it is used in this club scene, that is the place that it is used most often. So the combination of a lack of inhibition and memory loss caused by Rohypnol mixed with alcohol makes women especially vulnerable to being victims of date rape by people who convince women to take Rohypnol while drinking, or who put the drug in the woman's drink without her knowledge.

Mr. BIDEN. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BIDEN. Yes.

Mr. BIDEN. I would like to have the yeas and nays. I would be delighted if it could be accepted. If it can be accepted, I will not seek a vote.

Mr. BIDEN. No. This is all in one amendment. So let me just briefly explain what Ketamine is. Ketamine is an animal tranquilizer. Ketamine is a hallucinogen that is very similar to PCP. It is called ``Special K.'' It has become a new, popular ``designer'' drug. Although the drug has been in existence for several years, its abuse has rapidly become more prevalent in recent years. In fact, a club in New Jersey was recently closed by police after it discovered teens were attending these things called ``raves'' where club employees distribute bottled water for the purpose of being able to take this drug called ``Special K.'' In addition to seizures in New Jersey, recent newspaper articles have mentioned seizures in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona, California, and Florida. Drug trafficking experts have also cited the presence of ``Special K'' in Georgia and the District of Columbia and in my home State of Delaware. It is considered the successor to PCP, or ``angel dust,'' as it is known in the streets, due to the similarity of the two drugs' chemical compositions and mind-altering effects. There have also been reports of PCP being sold to people who think they are buying ``Special K.'' The bottom line is that this is becoming an incredibly popular drug. The point I will conclude with is I say to my colleagues that by moving Rohypnol to schedule 1 of the Federal Controlled Substances Act and adding ``Special K,'' Ketamine, to schedule 2 of the act, this legislation will subject both drugs to tough controls, increased penalties for unlawful activities involving the two drugs, and it will increase the attention of law enforcement and direct Federal efforts against this. Mr. President, It also enhances the penalties for people who abuse both these drugs. In an attempt to cooperate as much as I can, I will yield the floor unless there is somebody who will argue against it.

Mr. BIDEN. I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I call up amendment 5295 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BIDEN. Yes. Because the drug companies, the outfit that manufactures Rohypnol, does not like it being moved into schedule 1. I will take 2 more minutes to talk about Ketamine, and then I will yield the floor, and I am ready for a vote.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, is there any likelihood that my colleagues will be willing to accept this amendment?

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. I want to thank Senator Bradley. This issue was called to my attention by someone reading Good Housekeeping who asked me why everybody was writing to Bradley. I contacted Senator Bradley and wanted to know more about what he was talking about because I was hearing about this and found it hard to believe. You hear so many rumors today, so many people are upset about HMO's--much of it legitimate, some of it not legitimate--that you hear these horror stories. Quite frankly, when I first heard this back in my home State, I really did not believe that some HMO's and insurance companies were actually doing this. I did not think it was a joke, but I thought it was a clear misunderstanding on the part of the people who were saying this was happening--24 hours and you are out. This is, quite frankly, very scary. The potential danger is real. Think back, those of you women and men on this floor when you were young parents, to the first child you had and think back to when you brought that child home. I know this is a distant memory for some of us, myself included, but remember how it was. You brought that baby home, and when your wife turned and handed the baby to you, your first concern was maybe, ``Is it going to break?'' Or, ``I don't know what I am going to do here, I'm not sure.'' Then your wife, no matter how instinctively good a mother she is, used to go, in the first couple days the baby was home, and literally lean over the crib to make sure the baby was breathing. How many of you actually leaned over the crib and stuck your ear down to see if you could literally hear the baby breathing? The reason I point that out is the baby was healthy. Your children were, 99 percent of the time, healthy and nothing was wrong. But the point is, you didn't know. There are so many young mothers. The tragedy is that there are teenagers giving birth to children. The tragedy is that there are thousands of unwed mothers out there. What do they do when they go home--you may say that maybe they shouldn't be in that position, but they are--without anybody even having an opportunity to instruct them on how to deal with the baby, what to look for? These are very basic little things, just basic things. So I contacted the Delaware Medical Association and other doctors in Delaware. I wanted to know what their view on this was before I cosponsored Senator Bradley's bill. I was pleasantly surprised when the leading pediatricians and ob/gyn's showed up at a meeting I held and they unanimously supported the Bradley proposal. It was unanimous. Usually, you get some kind of heat when the Government is going to indicate that something must be done or when the Government is going to dictate something. In this case, it would dictate that an insurance company can't throw you out in 48 hours or 24 hours if the doctor says no. But here you had all these doctors, who are no fans of Government intervention, every one of them saying this is important. I will not take the time now to recount what they said because we want to move along. But, they gave me specific story after story, incident after incident, in just that one long breakfast meeting, of specific cases they had personally handled. This was 21 or 22 pediatricians and obstetricians. It amazed me. The intensity of their political views and the variation of their views was wide. So the only real mystery to me is, why in the devil is it taking us so long to pass this? That is the real mystery. The mystery to me is no longer if it is needed; the mystery is no longer that enough Members of Congress want it; the mystery to me is, who is stopping it? Why? Who is stopping this? Why isn't it done already? Now, you know the fact of the matter is that this is not the usual vehicle to pass this. I understand my friend from New Jersey concluded that he is getting all kinds of promises that we can bring this up and will have a chance to vote on it. I have not had a chance to speak to him about this point, but I assume the reason he is attaching it here is that his patience is running a little thin. He wants to make sure that before we go out of session we get a chance to act on something that clearly a majority of people want. So the biggest mystery to me is not why it is needed, not why it is important, not why do doctors support it, not why do mothers support it, but why hasn't it been done? Now, I know that speed was not what my colleague was known for on the court--I am only joking, Senator. I want to make it clear that he could go to his left and right and he could do everything on the court. He is a Hall of Famer. But the fact of the matter is, the reason it is not being done is not for the lack of my friend's pushing it. Although I imagine we are going to hear that this is not the vehicle--the HUD appropriations bill--to put this on, we are running out of runway and running out of time. A lot of women and a lot of children are at risk. Some would say, oh, what difference does it make to wait another month? In another month we are out of here, which means waiting until next year, and waiting until next year means the end of the next year. So the health and safety of hundreds of thousands of women and children are at risk here. It is a really basic proposition. Let me conclude by reiterating one point. A lot of my colleagues and individuals have asked me about this. And because they have not focused on it, I suspect, they did not understand one of the first points the Senator made when he took the floor, and that is, why don't they do it at the State level? Why not get this done at the State level? The Senator explained ERISA. The bottom line of this is that, in Delaware, only about 15 percent of the people with health insurance would be affected by a State law that my State is passing. My State is passing a law saying leave it to the doctor to decide. Notwithstanding that, those State legislators have come to me and said, we need a national law, because even with the State acting, and acting promptly, only 15 percent--15 percent--of the people with health insurance would be positively affected by the State law. To put it another way, the other 85 percent are out. They are out, without Federal legislation. I see Congressman Solomon on the floor. I thank him for his leadership. I thank Senator Bradley on this side for calling my attention to this and making me realize that this was not some exaggerated criticism of HMO's--which I honestly thought was the case when I first heard it in my State, that this was one of these horror stories that had been blown out of proportion. It is real, it is genuine, and the bottom line is that this will make a difference in the lives of mothers and their children. We should not wait any longer. I thank the Chair. Mr. FRIST addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, 2 days ago the President ordered a forceful response to Iraq's aggression against its own Kurdish minority. The question before us is whether the Senate supports the action taken by our President. Some have expressed concerns that go beyond the scope of that question. They have raised points that could be the matter of legitmate debate--but that debate should be reserved for another day. We are not debating the history of American diplomacy with respect to Iraq. We are not debating the future of American security policy in the Persian Gulf. We are simply being asked to state whether or not we support the actions initiated by the Commander in Chief; Whether we support the troops fulfilling his orders; and, whether we condemn Saddam Hussein's aggressive actions. These are weighty matters in and of themselves. We should not cloud the debate by injecting extraneous issues. I intend to support the resolution before us because I believe that the forceful response ordered by the President was both necessary and appropriate. Saddam Hussein has demonstrated repeatedly that he only understands the language of force. He was warned explicitly by the United States when evidence mounted of a threatening Iraqi military mobilization. He chose to ignore those warnings and enter an area that has been the site of past Iraqi transgressions. His actions violated universal human rights norms as well as U.N. Security Council Resolution 688, which demanded that he cease his oppression of the Kurds. Had this aggression gone unanswered, it would have strengthened his position internally and emboldened him to strike elsewhere. Thankfully, it did not go unanswered. President Clinton's decisive action sent a strong signal that the United States will not condone Iraqi military adventurism. It sent the message that there is a price to pay for aggression. It served to protect vital interests in the Persian Gulf by reassuring key allies of America's commitment to regional stability. And by extending the Southern no-fly-zone, the President has constrained Saddam Hussein's ability to make greater mischief. Upholding these interests transcends the concerns that I and many of my colleagues have over becoming enmeshed in the internecine warfare between Kurdish factions. The saga of the Kurds is a long tale of struggle, betrayal, and oppression. It is one that is further complicated by a regional dynamic involving Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurdish question does not lend itself to an easy solution. However, we should not allow the complexities of Kurdistan to cause us to lose sight of our broader objectives. The President's action is not about involving the United States in Kurdish intrigue. It is about containing a dangerous tyrant who is a continuing threat to international peace and security. It is about preserving stability in a region vital to American national security. In short, it is about protecting American interests. I urge my colleagues to join me in standing with the President as he confronts a ruthless dictator.