Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill to increase the authorization for low-income energy assistance, weatherization and state energy conservation grants and to increase the energy efficiency of federal facilities. I am offering this bill on behalf of myself, Senator Daschle, and many of my colleagues. Energy costs have been, and are expected, to remain especially high this year. We have had a long period of economic growth, enabled in part by extremely low oil and natural gas prices. But, we are finally experiencing the end of the excess capacity cushion that had kept the system functioning with low prices and relatively minor bumps along the way. Those extremely low oil and gas prices that consumers loved so much a few years ago devastated the domestic drilling industry. Drilling has recovered, so we will start seeing an impact on prices in the coming months as those supplies find their way to market. In the interim, unusually cold weather early in the winter has resulted in natural gas bills at least 70 percent-100 percent higher than last year. Heating oil and propane prices correlate closely with natural gas. Farmers, especially, are seeing huge increases in propane prices this winter and are looking at dramatically higher fertilizer prices this spring. Natural gas prices and tight generating capacity are driving up electricity prices around the country, and many people in the southern states with high air conditioning needs will be especially hard hit this summer. Applications for assistance have increased dramatically this year. Most states have already depleted the LIHEAP and Weatherization funds we appropriated for this year. Many states have laws prohibiting cutting off heating supplies during the winter, but when those prohibitions expire in March or April, the seriousness of the situation for low-income and working families will become harshly obvious. And assistance to low-income and working families for the summer cooling season will be impossible at current levels. Some will say we need to address these issues as part of some comprehensive energy bill, yet to be written. I disagree. We have immediate needs that cannot wait months, as we debate an ideal energy policy. The Administration has told us it will not even have its proposal to us for another two months. Individuals, families and small businesses are suffering today from energy bills they cannot pay. This bill authorizes changes to the LIHEAP program to help alleviate the financial burdens in the near term. The bill also focuses attention on investment in energy efficiency through the low income weatherization program, state conservation grants and the federal energy management program. This bill covers needed changes to existing authorizations. Next we need to ensure that full funding is forthcoming as soon as possible. Specifically, the base authorization for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program to $3.4 billion for fiscal years 2001 to 2005. The base funding has been relatively flat at roughly $2 billion since the mid-1980's. This increase comes close to addressing the erosion in the program due to inflation, but does not take into consideration the increase in population. The bill provides states with additional flexibility on the income level for recipients, by increasing eligibility from 150 percent to 200 percent of the poverty level. This change, which only applies for the remainder of this fiscal year, will give the states the flexibility to help working families. The bill also increases the authorization for the weatherization program to $310 million. The current appropriation is at $162 million, down from $300 million in the mid-1980s. The weatherization program is a long term investment in energy efficiency. A one-time investment in weatherization yields savings of $300-$470 per household annually thereafter. The program requires trained staff, erratic and insufficient funding of the program has diminished its effectiveness in recent years. Increased energy efficiency is the least cost solution to meeting energy needs. Even at $310 million the program is still lower in real dollars than in the 1980's. The bill increases the authorization for grants to state energy programs to $75 million. This program funds state conservation and emergency planning. The low level of funding in recent years has diminished the states' ability to implement state level conservation plans and to plan for emergencies in coordination with the Department of Energy and neighboring states. Finally, Executive Order 13123 requires federal facilities to increase energy efficiency by 30 percent by 2005 and 35 percent by 2010 relative to 1985. The Federal Energy Management Program requires federal facility managers to evaluate opportunities for energy and water efficiency improvements and opportunities for siting renewable projects. Federal agencies spend $4 billion per year to heat, coal and power facilities, we can and should do better. The bill includes several amendments to the program clarifying and enhancing the use of alternative financing tools to minimize the need for additional government outlays. The bill calls for a concerted effort by facility managers to meet those targets early, thereby saving taxpayer dollars, reducing stress on the power grid and demand for fuels. Companion measures, that I support, have been introduced by Senator Kerry, S. 295, Senator Feinstein, S. 286, to provide emergency loans to small businesses. There will be plenty of time in this Congress to consider the highly complex issues of U.S. energy supply and consumption. Senator Murkowski and I intend to proceed with a series of hearings to evaluate the different elements of our energy policy and systems. We need to focus on how we can ensure adequate fuel supplies and sufficient infrastructure to deliver those fuels, whether electricity, natural gas, or gasoline without degradation of environmental quality. We also need to look at issues of supply diversity and efficiency. Those efforts will require some time on the part of the Congress and the Administration, in consultation with the states and the various stakeholders. We should not allow that lengthy process, though, to prevent us from meeting clear and present needs. I urge my colleagues to support immediate passage of this bill and the small business bills. I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Bingaman pertaining to the introduction of S. 352 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to speak as in morning business for up to 8 minutes and that that time not count against the majority's allotted time.

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

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to take a few moments to talk about the proposed tax cut that is, of course, the main focus of a lot of our attention in the Congress since the President sent us the tax cut proposal this last week, and give some thoughts as to my perspective on it at this point. I am sure that perspective will evolve as we get closer to actual consideration of the bill on the Senate floor. But I wanted to talk about how I see it at this point. I think there are four obvious questions we need to ask about this tax cut proposal. First, should we have a tax cut? That may be the easiest question for all of us, but it is a legitimate question. Second, is the President's proposal the right size of tax cut in total, his $1.6 trillion proposal? Third, is it structured appropriately in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish for our economy? The fourth obvious question is, does the President's proposal constitute a fair distribution of the benefits from this proposed tax cut? Let me take a few minutes to deal with each of these. First of all, should we have a tax cut at this point in our Nation's history? To me, the answer is clearly yes. We can afford to have a tax cut because we are now projecting substantial surpluses, whereas most of the time I have served in the Senate, we have been dealing with deficits, not with surpluses. But we now have a surplus and a projected surplus; therefore, we can afford a tax cut. Second, if we do properly structure this tax cut and do it quickly, pass it quickly and send it to the President for signature, it could stimulate the economy at a time when our Nation may need a real stimulus, perhaps as early as this summer or early this fall. Those are reasons why I believe a tax cut is appropriate. The second question I posed was, was the President's proposed $1.6 trillion the right size of a tax cut at this time. I have some real doubts about that. And my answer has to be at this stage based on what I currently know and what I think all of us currently know. I think the answer has to be that it is not the right size; it is too large. The answer to the question has to be no. We should downsize the proposed tax cut before we enact anything here in the Senate. Why do I say this? Let me give a few reasons. First, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty at this particular point about where our economy is headed. Last Thursday I saw a report in the New York Times reporting that many States expect a reduction in their State sales tax receipts, indicating a slowdown in sales. Of course, the States are much more dependent upon sales tax receipts than the Federal Government. Many States that were awash with cash a few months ago now are preparing for budget cuts. They are seeing their projected surpluses at the State level evaporate as they see the expected revenue coming in from these sales taxes to be reduced. At the same time, the administration and the Federal Reserve Board are warning about a slowdown in the economy. I know Chairman Greenspan is speaking again today. I believe he testifies before the Banking Committee, and I imagine that he will, once again, make the point that he made to the Budget Committee a couple of weeks ago, which is that we have a very slow growth economy at this particular moment; there has been a substantial downturn in economic activity. All of this adds to the uncertainty, as I see it, and gives us more reason to hold off on locking in a very large tax cut until we get a better sense of where we are. A second reason is, when you look at the numbers and the size of the projected tax cut, you have to become concerned about, if we go with this large of a tax cut, whether we will have the funds necessary to pay down the debt. The remaining actions people in my State tell me they would like to see us take, if we have the funds, are a prescription drug benefit and increased defense spending. President Bush is going to military installations this week talking about how we need to put more into national defense. The question is, Can we afford that if we go with this very large tax cut, and increased funding for education, and for a variety of needs that we have in this country? I thought the best exposition I have seen and the best description of the problem and the best reasoned argument against the size of the tax cut was in the New York Times op-ed piece that Bob Rubin, our former Secretary of the Treasury, wrote. I thought it was extremely insightful. Let me read a paragraph. He says the serious threat of the proposed tax cut to fiscal soundness becomes apparent when you look at the numbers a little more closely. The surplus of $5.6 trillion as projected by the Congressional Budget Office is roughly $2.1 trillion after deducting Social Security and Medicare surpluses; as many Members of Congress in both parties have advocated, making realistic adjustments to better represent future spending on discretionary programs and tax revenues. He says we have a $1.2 trillion surplus that we are talking about having available for a tax cut. He said since the proposed tax cut would cost $2 trillion, or $2.2 trillion if an alternative minimum tax adjustment is included, it would entirely use up the remaining surplus with no additional debt reduction. That leaves nothing for special programs that already have broad support--such as the prescription drug benefit, or greater increased defense spending for a missile defense system, or other purposes, or additional tax cuts, all of which are sure to happen this year, or over the next few years. These spending increases and the additional tax cuts could well cost between $500 billion to $1 trillion leading to a deficit under this analysis of the Congressional Budget Office projections. My answer to the second question has to be that we cannot afford this size tax cut. The third question that I posed is what the President's proposed tax cut should be to accomplish what we want for our economy. Again, I think the answer has to be no. The reality when you look at the President's proposal is that this tax cut is not intended or designed or structured to provide tax relief to anyone in the near future. It is instead intended and designed and structured to provide tax relief in the distant future. The administration has argued that we need this tax cut to give the economy a boost at a time when we most need it, and when our economy most needs it. But the truth is, it provides absolutely no tax relief in 2001. It provides only $21 billion of tax relief in the year 2002. The tax cut proposal we have been sent by the President is backloaded. It is a much, much larger tax cut in future years--5 or 10 years from now--than it is this year. In fact, there is no tax cut this year as proposed by the President. In my view, the structuring of this tax cut as well as its size is flawed. The final question that I believe needs to be asked, and undoubtedly will be asked and answered many times in different ways by all of us, is, is the President proposing a fair distribution of the benefits of the tax cut. Again, my answer has to be no. The proposal the President sent us is heavily weighted to help those with higher incomes. I was reading a magazine that arrived at our house last night--the U.S. News & World Report. They had a chart depicting how benefits from the Bush tax plan stack up. I was just trying to analyze that chart. They take a single person, with no children, with a $25,000 adjusted gross income and then they go up to $300,000 adjusted gross income, and a married couple with one spouse working and two children. They go through a variety of possible taxpayer situations and try to analyze how much actual tax relief will be available. According to their calculation, under the Bush plan, an individual who is earning $25,000 a year adjusted gross income, would get $60 in tax relief the first year that this is in effect. That would be 2002. You get a $60 cut in your taxes. If you take the person who has a $300,000 income, what about their situation? They would get $25,679 in tax relief that first year. You say: Well, what is wrong with that? A person with an income of $25,000 is earning one-twelfth of what the person with an income of $300,000 is earning. The tax cut for the person earning $25,000 would be one forty-second as large as the tax cut the person earning $300,000 would receive. Then if you look at the figures 5 years out after their tax cut really begins to substantially impact, the person earning $25,000 would get a $300-per-year tax cut. The person earning $300,000 would get nearly $10,000 in tax cuts, or 32 times as much tax of a cut as the person who is earning $25,000. I have tried to get some statistics also on the impact of the President's proposal in my State, to work those up and try to understand how the people whom I represent would be affected. Of course, some of it is not that clear. But if you look at the demographic breakdown of the Bush tax cut as it affects the New Mexico taxpayers, the inequity is fairly stark. Based on the statistics that were supplied in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday, while only roughly 4 percent of the Bush tax cut will be going to the bottom half of the people who file tax returns in my State, nearly half the benefits of the tax cut will go to fewer than 4 percent of the wealthiest individuals in my State. On the issue of eliminating the estate tax--part of what the President has proposed is to have no estate tax in the future--in 1998, in New Mexico, to give a clear impression as to whom this benefits, there were 166 estates that paid estate tax. If, instead of repealing the estate tax, we would increase the current exemption from the $675,000 to $2.5 million, which is one of the proposals some of us have embraced, then there would be 26 of those estates that would have paid estate tax in my State in that year under that changed law. At a time when the administration is asking charities and private citizens to do more for their communities, we are eliminating one of the largest tax advantages for charitable contributions by wealthy individuals, if we, in fact, eliminate the estate and gift tax. There is serious doubt as to whether this proposed tax cut is fair in its distribution of benefits, and we need to study that. We need to try to come up with something that is more fair, something that will benefit average working families in the country. We should move quickly to try to enact a tax cut because that will help us economically, but we should not move so quickly that we do not take the time to change what has been sent to us by the President and come up with the right size tax cut, which, as I say, would be substantially less than the $1.6 trillion. We should take the time to be sure it is structured in a way that the benefit is realized this year, a significant portion of the benefit, so Americans can take money home this year and see benefits in their own checking accounts. We should alter what the President has sent us to make it more equitable. We should see to it that average working families and individuals get their fair share of whatever tax cut is enacted. This tax cut is not designed to appropriately distribute those benefits. It is something that will require substantial work. I hope we can do that. One of the unfortunate things about our political process is that oftentimes candidates for public office make proposals and get locked into political positions long before they are elected to the office and in a position to actually try to work for the enactment of those positions. That is what has happened in this case. President Bush adopted his proposal for a $1.6 trillion tax cut well over a year ago when he was in the primaries running against Steve Forbes. There was a lot of competition within the Republican Party to see who could propose the larger tax cut. President Bush proposed a very large one, and he has stuck to that in spite of the fact that our circumstances have changed, in spite of the fact that the economy today is not the robust economy we had a year ago, and in spite of the fact that there are real uncertainties about where we are going. I hope we will take the time to analyze what the President sent. I hope we will also take the time to revise it so that we can better serve the people of this country by giving them a tax cut from which they can benefit quickly, a tax cut that most Americans will consider fair. I believe that is in the best interest of the country and that is clearly what our constituents have sent us here to do. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from New York on her first official speech here in the Senate. I particularly appreciate her focus on health care, a subject about which she knows a tremendous amount. Of course, she will make a great contribution in the Senate.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, natural gas prices are only part of the problem. After a number of years of surplus gas supplies, pipeline capacity, and high electricity reserve margins, we are bumping up against the constraints of our infrastructure in each of these areas. We need to deal with that. I hope we can this spring. We are going to work on legislation in the Energy Committee to do that. Passage of this pipeline safety bill is a small but a very important step to help restore public confidence in the pipeline infrastructure and to avoid these catastrophes in the future. I believe this will be an appropriate step to take. I hope very much, after we pass this bill--as I believe we will today--the House of Representatives will take it up and pass it quickly so that the Office of Pipeline Safety can get about the business of better inspections to avoid catastrophes such as we faced near Carlsbad this last year. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit No. 1 [From the Energy Daily, Feb. 6, 2001] Pipeline Bottleneck To Pinch Gas Supplies for New England IPPs (By Jeff Beattie) In a stark warning that New England's power supply is becoming over-dependent on natural gas, the region's grid operator said Monday that natural gas pipelines will not be able to fill generators' requirements by 2005, leaving them unable to operate 3,000 megawatts of gas-fired capacity. The study released by ISO New England Inc. predicted ``substantial unserved gas requirements'' by 2005 absent major changes in infrastructure or fuel use. The independent system operator urged a streamlined regulatory process to expand pipeline capacity and--in a proposal that raised generators' hackles--called for requirements that new independent gas-fired plants develop backup capabilities to burn oil. The study said the gas crunch was developing because gas- fired generating capacity is expected to triple between 1999 and 2005, rising from 16 percent of total capacity to 45 percent. At the same time, pipeline capacity is not increasing at the same pace, meaning independent generators likely will have to keep 3,000 MW idle in the 2005 peak heating season due to lack of gas. The study said smaller, brief shortfalls could occur in the winter of 2003. The study said independent generators would feel the impact before utilities because the current system's operational flexibility could not meet coincident needs of both, and ``the demands of utilities are scheduled first--the majority of throughput for generation is subordinated.'' Conducted by Boston-based Levitan and Associates Inc., the study also suggests that the ability of gas-fired generators to switch ``on-the-fly'' to distillate oil will be crucial not only to meet the potential shortfall but to take up slack in the event one of the region's major pipes has an accident or shutdown. The ISO said switching to oil was workable because 5,900 MW of generation capacity have air permits that permit such switching. The region's shortfall stems from a projected installation of between 7,500 and 11,600 MW of gas-fired generation by 2005. Virtually all of the new generating facilities plan to use gas from Western Canada, the Gulf Coast, or-- increasingly--from new reserves off the coast of Nova Scotia. Pipeline industry officials say the Northeast's problems are not surprising given the obstacles thrown up to the industry's efforts to add capacity to the five major interstate pipeline systems now serving the region. ``FERC delayed one projected by over a year and a half because they had 7,000 landowner complaints,'' said Jerry Halvorsen, president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA). ``But we went into the FERC document room and identified that only 5 percent of those complainants were actually along the right of way, and in one case they had counted one letter 14 times.'' Halvorsen also pointed to opposition from utilities concerned that expansion would primarily feed independent generators, and environmental agency concern about stream crossings. He added that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, under the leadership of new Chairman Curt Hebert, seems now to be headed in the right direction. ``I think FERC will do what it has to,'' he said. The ISO suggests a number of ways to both increase the flow of natural gas and reduce dependence, including: Requiring merchant generators to certify the ``character and quality'' of their gas transportation; additional modeling to predict impacts of system breakdowns; and support for streamlining federal pipe approval. ``These fixes are doable if we get started now,'' said ISO Vice President of System Operations Stephen Whitley. ``If you wait until winter's over and forget about it because the cold weather's gone, and then start talking about it later, that would be terrible.'' Officials representing New England generators generally agreed with the findings of the ISO's study, but objected to its recommendation that IPPs be required to have fuel- switching capability. ``We would oppose that,'' said Neal Costello, general counsel for the Competitive Power Coalition of New England. ``ISO New England need to understand that they were created to facilitate the development of a competitive wholesale market. They are not `The Great Regulator,' which is unfortunately sometimes how they view their role. ``The fuel-switching capabilities of plants can be somewhat misleading. Let's be honest about it: We [the generators] would be switching from gas that people use to heat their homes, to distillate oil that people use to heat their homes.'' Costello said also said ``draconian environmental regulations'' were part of New England's gas-dependence problem.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for another 2 minutes.

Mr. BINGAMAN. We do have a series of near-term crises related to energy in the country. We are more and more aware of those families and businesses that have been hit by winter heating bills. There are high natural gas prices affecting power prices in the western part of the country. Natural gas is a feedstock for the fertilizer industry, and the high prices have shut down production of fertilizer in some parts of our country. Farmers are not going to find adequate supplies for the spring planting season.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to speak on the bill for a very few minutes, and, of course, congratulate Senator Corzine and the other cosponsors for the amendment that was just adopted, which I strongly support. This bill overall is very important to the people of my State. Senator Domenici and I had the experience of learning last August of a terrible rupture of a high-pressure natural gas pipeline coming through New Mexico on its way to California. It occurred on August 19 near Carlsbad, NM, at 5:30 in the morning. Unfortunately, the rupture occurred at a place where the pipeline crosses the Pecos River. It was a place where many people came to fish and camp. There was a large family there, an extended family and friends who were camped there that night and the next morning when the rupture occurred. The rupture did kill 12 people. Shortly thereafter, there was a 13th person who died later from injuries received at the site. It was a terrible tragedy for our State and for the entire country. After visiting the site with the personnel from the Office of Pipeline Safety, it became clear to me that that office did not have adequate resources to do what it needed to do and it did not have adequate authority to do what it needed to do. There are over 500,000 miles of interstate pipeline in the United States. That agency needs the additional authority contained in this bill in order to address the different circumstances of individual pipelines. The Senate bill requires each and every interstate natural gas and hazardous liquid pipeline to develop and implement an integrity management plan. The bill gives the Office of Pipeline Safety the authority to impose rigorous requirements to address areas with the greatest likelihood of failures and, specifically, to address aging pipelines and those in populated or environmentally sensitive areas. The transmission line in New Mexico, as I said, was crossing the Pecos River at the place where it ruptured. The bend in the pipe that was required in order to cross that river was part of the problem that led to the rupture of the pipeline. As best we can determine, the pipeline ruptured because of internal corrosion in the line. The line was 40 or so years old. It is a very longstanding line. There had not been adequate inspection, particularly inspection that would have caught that internal corrosion. In the hopes of preventing other problems such as this which have gone undetected, and the ability to move some of the equipment that is used to determine internal corrosion that is impeded when you have a sharp bend in the pipe, which is what we had there where the pipe was crossing the river, I introduced a bill to set up a coordinated research and development program. I am very pleased to say that has been incorporated into this bill that we are voting on today. These natural gas and liquid pipelines are a critical element of the Nation's energy infrastructure. They provide a cost-effective and relatively safe means of delivering energy. As our economy has grown and become increasingly urbanized, the siting of new pipelines has become more and more of a challenge. At the same time, the importance of having these lines has increased dramatically, and the importance of ensuring the safety of these lines has increased dramatically. Earlier this week, the Energy Daily reported that inadequate pipeline capacity into the northeastern part of this country will create serious power supply problems in the next few years. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article from the Energy Daily be printed in the Record following my statement.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, my only amendment will be that I be added as a cosponsor to the amendment of the Senator from New Jersey.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. The situation in California is very serious. It is now affecting not only the price and supply of electricity in California but the price and supply of electricity throughout the West. It poses a grave danger to the economy of the nation as a whole. The State of California is doing what it can to cope with this crisis. It is past time for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to use its existing authority to bring wholesale prices under control. I commend the Senator from California, Senator Feinstein, for her initiative in crafting the bill, and the chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator Murkowski, for agreeing to give us a hearing on it.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. The situation in California is very serious. It is now affecting not only the price and supply of electricity in California but the price and supply of electricity throughout the West. It poses a grave danger to the economy of the nation as a whole. The State of California is doing what it can to cope with this crisis. It is past time for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to use its existing authority to bring wholesale prices under control. I commend the Senator from California, Senator Feinstein, for her initiative in crafting the bill, and the chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator Murkowski, for agreeing to give us a hearing on it.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with my colleagues Senators Jeffords, Levin, Brownback, and Helms the ``Rural Hospital and Health Network Preservation Act of 2001.'' As you are aware, rural health care providers have operating margins that are often much lower and more dependent upon Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement then suburban or urban providers. The Balanced Budget Refinement Act of 1999 (BBRA 99) allowed rural hospitals of less than 100 beds to be held harmless in the conversion to the new outpatient Prospective Payment System by allowing them to choose to stay essentially under the old fee-for-service program which provided them with increased revenue. However, that 100-bed limit seems arbitrary and will actually result in many slightly larger rural hospitals, that have even higher per patient costs and lower per patient margins, being squeezed even harder under BBA 97 rules. With passage of the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000, several additional fixes were put in place for rural providers. While these were steps in the right direction, rural hospitals with between 100 and 400 beds are still not being held harmless in the conversion to the new outpatient Prospective Payment System. This group of hospitals is still suffering under provisions of the BBA of 1997. Rural hospitals, and all hospitals for that matter, operate on very slim margins yet manage to bring cutting-edge medical care to the communities they serve. But changes in Medicare payments to hospitals have put many institutions in a bind. The bill I am introducing today will extend the BBRA of 99 hold- harmless provisions to rural hospitals of up to 400 beds that are both Rural Referral Centers and Sole Community Hospitals. This will bring outpatient reimbursement rates for these critical health care providers closer in line to the actual health care costs incurred in rural America by these valued providers. Rural communities across New Mexico have felt the negative impact of the BBA of 97. The Carlsbad Regional Medical Center, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center, San Juan Regional Medical Center, and Lea Regional Hospital have all been suffering because of the BBA of 97. They tell me that they are bearing substantially higher expenses per patient due to diseconomies of scale for the technically intensive speciality care that is required at these types of facilities. In addition, they face difficulties in recruiting qualified health professionals, as well as qualified coders and compliance experts that are required under the new outpatient Prospective Payment System given Medicare's complexity. This is not a New Mexico only problem. There are at least sixty-one other rural hospitals that fall in this same category across the United States that are also suffering. While the positive restorative effects of BBRA of 99 and the recently enacted ``Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000'' were very helpful, they are not enough to protect rural providers. We must prevent rural hospitals from reducing services or closing completely. When a rural hospital reduces services, or worse yet closes, local residents lose access to preventive, routine, and even emergency services. Doctors and other highly trained professionals move away. Then people must drive a hundred miles or more in some cases to get the care city dwellers take for granted. Local economies suffer when jobs are lost. Existing businesses may have to move, and new businesses won't locate in places where health care is unavailable. Hospital closure can be a death-knell for struggling towns. We must move forward to preserve and strengthen the ability of our Nation's rural hospitals and other Medicare providers to provide adequate health care to their patients. I urge my colleagues to support and pass the Rural Hospital and Health Network Preservation Act of 2001. I ask consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with my colleagues Senators Jeffords, Levin, Brownback, and Helms the ``Rural Hospital and Health Network Preservation Act of 2001.'' As you are aware, rural health care providers have operating margins that are often much lower and more dependent upon Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement then suburban or urban providers. The Balanced Budget Refinement Act of 1999 (BBRA 99) allowed rural hospitals of less than 100 beds to be held harmless in the conversion to the new outpatient Prospective Payment System by allowing them to choose to stay essentially under the old fee-for-service program which provided them with increased revenue. However, that 100-bed limit seems arbitrary and will actually result in many slightly larger rural hospitals, that have even higher per patient costs and lower per patient margins, being squeezed even harder under BBA 97 rules. With passage of the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000, several additional fixes were put in place for rural providers. While these were steps in the right direction, rural hospitals with between 100 and 400 beds are still not being held harmless in the conversion to the new outpatient Prospective Payment System. This group of hospitals is still suffering under provisions of the BBA of 1997. Rural hospitals, and all hospitals for that matter, operate on very slim margins yet manage to bring cutting-edge medical care to the communities they serve. But changes in Medicare payments to hospitals have put many institutions in a bind. The bill I am introducing today will extend the BBRA of 99 hold- harmless provisions to rural hospitals of up to 400 beds that are both Rural Referral Centers and Sole Community Hospitals. This will bring outpatient reimbursement rates for these critical health care providers closer in line to the actual health care costs incurred in rural America by these valued providers. Rural communities across New Mexico have felt the negative impact of the BBA of 97. The Carlsbad Regional Medical Center, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center, San Juan Regional Medical Center, and Lea Regional Hospital have all been suffering because of the BBA of 97. They tell me that they are bearing substantially higher expenses per patient due to diseconomies of scale for the technically intensive speciality care that is required at these types of facilities. In addition, they face difficulties in recruiting qualified health professionals, as well as qualified coders and compliance experts that are required under the new outpatient Prospective Payment System given Medicare's complexity. This is not a New Mexico only problem. There are at least sixty-one other rural hospitals that fall in this same category across the United States that are also suffering. While the positive restorative effects of BBRA of 99 and the recently enacted ``Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000'' were very helpful, they are not enough to protect rural providers. We must prevent rural hospitals from reducing services or closing completely. When a rural hospital reduces services, or worse yet closes, local residents lose access to preventive, routine, and even emergency services. Doctors and other highly trained professionals move away. Then people must drive a hundred miles or more in some cases to get the care city dwellers take for granted. Local economies suffer when jobs are lost. Existing businesses may have to move, and new businesses won't locate in places where health care is unavailable. Hospital closure can be a death-knell for struggling towns. We must move forward to preserve and strengthen the ability of our Nation's rural hospitals and other Medicare providers to provide adequate health care to their patients. I urge my colleagues to support and pass the Rural Hospital and Health Network Preservation Act of 2001. I ask consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for technology transfer. This bi-partisan bill which is referred to as the ``National Laboratories Partnership Improvement Act of 2001'' is co-sponsored by my colleagues Mr. Domenici and Mrs. Murray. Let me summarize this bill. First, I will outline the Department's commitment to science and how it has admirably worked to transfer its technology in light of a serious resource decline. I then will discuss how tech transfer naturally compliments the Department's mission oriented R&D. I will review the legislation we introduced in the last session which is a start in the right direction. I will conclude by proposing how this bill by leveraging existing efforts, should move the Department in the right direction to support technology transfer without disrupting its R&D mission focus. The Department of Energy is about science. For FY 2001, the Department's R&D budget was roughly $8 billion out of the $18.3 billion appropriated. Science programs account for 43 percent of the Department's budget. In the area of the physical sciences, DOE provides roughly half of all of the federal R&D. In mathematics and computer sciences, DOE is second after the DOD. In engineering, the DOE ranks third after NASA and the DOD. DOE affiliated scientists have won more than 71 Nobel prizes for fundamental research; they garner the largest number of R&D 100 awards for applied research. The Department has more than 60 multipurpose laboratories and primary purpose facilities across the U.S. in high energy physics, materials science, nuclear science and engineering, waste management, biosciences, robotics, advanced scientific computing, microelectronic and nanomaterials fabrication. Each year DOE labs and facilities are used by more than 18,000 researchers from universities and industry. Yet with this surprising portfolio of research, the Department in FY 2001 only line allocates $10 million for the transfer of technology. In 1995 this allocation was over $200 million. That is not to say DOE is not transferring its technology. In FY 1998, which is our last set of good statistics from the Department of Commerce's Office of Technology Policy, the DOE was second only to the DOD in the number of CRADA's granted from its federal facilities, the DOD had 1424 and the DOE had 868. The in-kind funds from industry to DOE for these CRADA's averages about $100 million while its work for others from non-federal sources was $145 million. In FY 1998, the DOE had 168 licenses granted to use its technology, the DOD had 34 and HHS had 215. In FY 1998, the DOE had 512 patents issued on federal lab inventions while the DOD had 579, the next closest was HHS with 171. In FY 1998, 50 companies were established as a result of DOE technology transfer. To put these numbers in perspective, the DOD R&D budget for FY 1998 was $37.5 billion, HHS' was $13.8 billion, while DOE's was $6.3 billion. These statistics are impressive because in FY 1998 the DOE had line allocated about 1 percent of its R&D budget to tech transfer. Today, that number is 0.14 percent of its R&D budget. Given that tech transfer is not the Department's primary mission, the question is what is the right mix and what is the optimal technology to transfer? For the NNSA, the primary mission is ensuring a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile. The Office of Science's primary mission is advancing the frontiers of basic R&D. The Office of Environmental Management's primary mission is cleaning up contaminated DOE sites. The Fossil Energy Program's mission is developing cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels. The list goes on. Nor do I think that tech transfer, given the above numbers will be the principal engine for direct economic growth in the tech heavy new economy. Let me explain this premise by examing the pattern of economic and technological growth in a little more detail. In the year 2000, the National Science Foundation estimates that total U.S. R&D was $264 billion, a 7.9 percent increase over 1999 which itself was a 7.5 percent increase over 1998. Technology R&D has a growth rate exceeding 15 percent in the last two years alone. What counts is the make up of these R&D trends. In the year 2000, the industry contribution to the total R&D was $179 billion, a 10.3 percent increase over 1999 while federal R&D grew by only 3.9 percent. Given the investment the federal government makes in R&D, technology transfer from federal labs does not contribute directly to these amazing growth rates. In industries like telecommunications and chip design, the turn around cycles from research to product ranges from 1 to 3 years. The government is simply too slow to contribute directly to industrial driven short term needs that are so clearly evident in these national trends of R&D funding. On the other end of the spectrum, basic and applied R&D are areas where industry finds it difficult to invest given the short term equity demands on their profits. The right mix then is for the government to maintain basic and applied R&D so it can transfer this knowledge to industry over the long term. If we agree that the government best transfers long term R&D we must ask the next question which is how do the Department's mission focused R&D programs transfer technology to the private sector and how can the Department ensure its continued success with minimal disruption to its mission areas? Mission focused DOE programs like the NNSA, Environmental Management, Fossil Energy, Renewable Energy, Nuclear Energy and the Office of Science all advance the frontiers of science at different stages. All of these programs in carrying out their missions naturally perform different degrees of tech transfer. The Fossil Energy, Nuclear and Renewable programs work closely with industry and usually cannot start without an industry partner through a CRADA. The NNSA with their advanced computing requirements naturally push the state of the art in industry. CRADA's and Licenses provide to the NNSA a fresh influx of the outside world's advancing technology into their national security missions. The Office of Science with their wonderful user facilities and broad basic energy research mandate provide a fertile R&D base by which industry can stay competitive ten years out into the future, CRADA's smooth and shorten that transition. CRADA arrangements are a natural outgrowth of the DOE mission programs. A CRADA or License simply makes the tech transfer process smoother. So the issue is not how much money do we need to line item for the formation of a CRADA or a license--the CRADA is simply a by product of a organic tech transfer process in the Department's R&D programs. The issue is what kind of organizational structure in the DOE do we need to keep track of these tech transfer activities and how to insure that it is easily accessible for potential partnerships. If as I have just described that tech transfer occurs organically to the Department's R&D mission areas we need to ask ourselves is there an infrastructure that moves beyond the single contractual framework which a CRADA represents? Tech transfer is not so much a static contract but it is a multi-dimensional transactional process. In some select cases we should stimulate the transactional tech transfer process by regional technology clusters. Technology clusters will permit industry to locate around these wonderful pools of scientific knowledge. In turn they will build the R&D infrastructure surrounding the laboratory itself. We all too often think that the internet can solve the distance problem of connecting business transactions thus negating the need for regional technology clusters--that's actually wrong, very wrong. Successful utilization of R&D technology starts because many small business are nearby to each other in a supportive state business climate. The technology clusters that form simply use the internet to exchange ideas and data that they generate from face-to-face collaboration on short notice. People to people transactions initiate business and wealth in a rather spontaneous event; the internet is simply a tool to make it more efficient. You see such natural clustering occurring in Wall Street for financial markets, Palo Alto for information technology, Detroit for automobiles and right here in Bethesda for genetics around the NIH. Thus, enabling the formation technology clusters rather than focusing on the static contractual CRADA process should be the next step in the evolution of federal technology transfer. The bill I am introducing today address the issues I have just outlined. It establishes a headquarters level Technology Transfer Coordinator as the Secretary's lead advocate for developing DOE technology transfer policy across its many missions. This Coordinator will collect and disseminate tech transfer data to Congress, the interagency and public. I have provided a ceiling limit of about $1 million per year to collect this data and prepare the reports as required by law. I have provided additional funding for the Coordinator to help out the administrative tasks associated with the Interlaboratory Technology Partnerships Working Group. This group is staffed by members from the DOE laboratories and facilities with the purpose to deconflict and disseminate publically DOE's R&D. The Interlaboratory Technology Partnerships Working Group is a powerful grass roots organization outside the beltway. This group operates at the local community and laboratory level where the technology initiates. I have designated the Coordinator as the Secretary's lead federal officer for the group's oversight by reporting its activities to Congress and the interagency. I have authorized about $1 million a year to leverage the Technology Partnerships Working Group's activities by ensuring that it can develop the necessary web interfaces and databases by which the public can easily access DOE's technology. I have expanded the clustering bill that was introduced in the last Congress through the Defense Authorization Act from the NNSA laboratories to the entire DOE complex. This expansion will permit industry to benefit from the entire range of technology R&D across the DOE. If successful, these clusters will strengthen our experience in technology clusters; it will actively involve the state and local communities in encouraging the role that a technology infrastructure will have in their economic development. I have authorized $10 million for these clusters while requiring a 50 percent in-kind funding contribution from the proposed partner. The clustering partner can be a state, university, R&D consortia or business entity. I have given the Secretary discretion to stop this clustering expansion if the pilot effort for the NNSA labs proves unworkable. I have authorized a small- business advocate, to support DOE wide, for what has been a lab by lab policy. Such a small business provision is needed to accommodate the unique needs for R&D collaboration of start up businesses. I have proposed modifying the Department of Energy Organization Act to make it more flexible in entering into alternative research contracts with entities such as R&D consortia. Finally, I have asked the Secretary to examine the need for a policy to move people across the lab fence to start up companies. This policy is balanced against the unique mission areas of each lab. In some cases implementing such a policy may prove unworkable based upon a lab's mission requirement. If such a policy proves unreasonable based upon a particular lab's mission, I have given Secretary the discretion not to implement it. I must emphasize though that half of tech transfer is not just a piece of technology moving across the fence but the movement of people and their know-how to a small start up. Universities are a classic example of the movement of technology and people between their home institution and a small regional technology park. Everyone benefits from this flow in people, the start-up, the lab or facility with a more vibrant workforce surrounding it and the local economy through local high tech business start ups. Mr. President, I want to emphasize that this is not another line item CRADA funding project, its not corporate welfare. This bill takes the tech transfer activities that are naturally occurring in all these varied science mission areas and leverages them with small amounts of funding--about 0.06 percent of DOE's overall budget. Let me summarize once more what I have just outlined is in the proposed bill. First, a small Technology Transfer Coordinator is proposed to be the Secretary's advocate across the Department for uniform policy development and reporting. Second, a small web based interface is proposed to help the public easily access and leverage the R&D activities at all the DOE labs and facilities. Third, I've proposed to help seed small technology clusters local to the labs under merit review and with the discretion not to proceed forward if the FY 2001 NNSA pilot program proves unworkable. Technology clusters are the next evolutionary stage past a static CRADA. Fourth, I've asked the Secretary to implement, where its feasible, a policy where by laboratory personnel can move with the technology to start up a company outside the fence. Fifth, I asked the Secretary to ensure where its reasonable a uniform policy to help small businesses with their unique needs access DOE technology. Like most government programs that come under close scrutiny by Congress, their intent is worthy but the program's size oscillates greatly over time. The pendulum for tech transfer at the DOE is one such program. This program has swung from a $200 million program in the mid 1990's to essentially zero funding in FY 2001 with a minimal headquarter's office to help policy development across its diverse mission areas. This bill establishes what I feel is the right level of tech transfer in a R&D organization by leveraging the existing industrial collaboration that naturally occurs in carrying out their missions. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for technology transfer. This bi-partisan bill which is referred to as the ``National Laboratories Partnership Improvement Act of 2001'' is co-sponsored by my colleagues Mr. Domenici and Mrs. Murray. Let me summarize this bill. First, I will outline the Department's commitment to science and how it has admirably worked to transfer its technology in light of a serious resource decline. I then will discuss how tech transfer naturally compliments the Department's mission oriented R&D. I will review the legislation we introduced in the last session which is a start in the right direction. I will conclude by proposing how this bill by leveraging existing efforts, should move the Department in the right direction to support technology transfer without disrupting its R&D mission focus. The Department of Energy is about science. For FY 2001, the Department's R&D budget was roughly $8 billion out of the $18.3 billion appropriated. Science programs account for 43 percent of the Department's budget. In the area of the physical sciences, DOE provides roughly half of all of the federal R&D. In mathematics and computer sciences, DOE is second after the DOD. In engineering, the DOE ranks third after NASA and the DOD. DOE affiliated scientists have won more than 71 Nobel prizes for fundamental research; they garner the largest number of R&D 100 awards for applied research. The Department has more than 60 multipurpose laboratories and primary purpose facilities across the U.S. in high energy physics, materials science, nuclear science and engineering, waste management, biosciences, robotics, advanced scientific computing, microelectronic and nanomaterials fabrication. Each year DOE labs and facilities are used by more than 18,000 researchers from universities and industry. Yet with this surprising portfolio of research, the Department in FY 2001 only line allocates $10 million for the transfer of technology. In 1995 this allocation was over $200 million. That is not to say DOE is not transferring its technology. In FY 1998, which is our last set of good statistics from the Department of Commerce's Office of Technology Policy, the DOE was second only to the DOD in the number of CRADA's granted from its federal facilities, the DOD had 1424 and the DOE had 868. The in-kind funds from industry to DOE for these CRADA's averages about $100 million while its work for others from non-federal sources was $145 million. In FY 1998, the DOE had 168 licenses granted to use its technology, the DOD had 34 and HHS had 215. In FY 1998, the DOE had 512 patents issued on federal lab inventions while the DOD had 579, the next closest was HHS with 171. In FY 1998, 50 companies were established as a result of DOE technology transfer. To put these numbers in perspective, the DOD R&D budget for FY 1998 was $37.5 billion, HHS' was $13.8 billion, while DOE's was $6.3 billion. These statistics are impressive because in FY 1998 the DOE had line allocated about 1 percent of its R&D budget to tech transfer. Today, that number is 0.14 percent of its R&D budget. Given that tech transfer is not the Department's primary mission, the question is what is the right mix and what is the optimal technology to transfer? For the NNSA, the primary mission is ensuring a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile. The Office of Science's primary mission is advancing the frontiers of basic R&D. The Office of Environmental Management's primary mission is cleaning up contaminated DOE sites. The Fossil Energy Program's mission is developing cleaner and more efficient fossil fuels. The list goes on. Nor do I think that tech transfer, given the above numbers will be the principal engine for direct economic growth in the tech heavy new economy. Let me explain this premise by examing the pattern of economic and technological growth in a little more detail. In the year 2000, the National Science Foundation estimates that total U.S. R&D was $264 billion, a 7.9 percent increase over 1999 which itself was a 7.5 percent increase over 1998. Technology R&D has a growth rate exceeding 15 percent in the last two years alone. What counts is the make up of these R&D trends. In the year 2000, the industry contribution to the total R&D was $179 billion, a 10.3 percent increase over 1999 while federal R&D grew by only 3.9 percent. Given the investment the federal government makes in R&D, technology transfer from federal labs does not contribute directly to these amazing growth rates. In industries like telecommunications and chip design, the turn around cycles from research to product ranges from 1 to 3 years. The government is simply too slow to contribute directly to industrial driven short term needs that are so clearly evident in these national trends of R&D funding. On the other end of the spectrum, basic and applied R&D are areas where industry finds it difficult to invest given the short term equity demands on their profits. The right mix then is for the government to maintain basic and applied R&D so it can transfer this knowledge to industry over the long term. If we agree that the government best transfers long term R&D we must ask the next question which is how do the Department's mission focused R&D programs transfer technology to the private sector and how can the Department ensure its continued success with minimal disruption to its mission areas? Mission focused DOE programs like the NNSA, Environmental Management, Fossil Energy, Renewable Energy, Nuclear Energy and the Office of Science all advance the frontiers of science at different stages. All of these programs in carrying out their missions naturally perform different degrees of tech transfer. The Fossil Energy, Nuclear and Renewable programs work closely with industry and usually cannot start without an industry partner through a CRADA. The NNSA with their advanced computing requirements naturally push the state of the art in industry. CRADA's and Licenses provide to the NNSA a fresh influx of the outside world's advancing technology into their national security missions. The Office of Science with their wonderful user facilities and broad basic energy research mandate provide a fertile R&D base by which industry can stay competitive ten years out into the future, CRADA's smooth and shorten that transition. CRADA arrangements are a natural outgrowth of the DOE mission programs. A CRADA or License simply makes the tech transfer process smoother. So the issue is not how much money do we need to line item for the formation of a CRADA or a license--the CRADA is simply a by product of a organic tech transfer process in the Department's R&D programs. The issue is what kind of organizational structure in the DOE do we need to keep track of these tech transfer activities and how to insure that it is easily accessible for potential partnerships. If as I have just described that tech transfer occurs organically to the Department's R&D mission areas we need to ask ourselves is there an infrastructure that moves beyond the single contractual framework which a CRADA represents? Tech transfer is not so much a static contract but it is a multi-dimensional transactional process. In some select cases we should stimulate the transactional tech transfer process by regional technology clusters. Technology clusters will permit industry to locate around these wonderful pools of scientific knowledge. In turn they will build the R&D infrastructure surrounding the laboratory itself. We all too often think that the internet can solve the distance problem of connecting business transactions thus negating the need for regional technology clusters--that's actually wrong, very wrong. Successful utilization of R&D technology starts because many small business are nearby to each other in a supportive state business climate. The technology clusters that form simply use the internet to exchange ideas and data that they generate from face-to-face collaboration on short notice. People to people transactions initiate business and wealth in a rather spontaneous event; the internet is simply a tool to make it more efficient. You see such natural clustering occurring in Wall Street for financial markets, Palo Alto for information technology, Detroit for automobiles and right here in Bethesda for genetics around the NIH. Thus, enabling the formation technology clusters rather than focusing on the static contractual CRADA process should be the next step in the evolution of federal technology transfer. The bill I am introducing today address the issues I have just outlined. It establishes a headquarters level Technology Transfer Coordinator as the Secretary's lead advocate for developing DOE technology transfer policy across its many missions. This Coordinator will collect and disseminate tech transfer data to Congress, the interagency and public. I have provided a ceiling limit of about $1 million per year to collect this data and prepare the reports as required by law. I have provided additional funding for the Coordinator to help out the administrative tasks associated with the Interlaboratory Technology Partnerships Working Group. This group is staffed by members from the DOE laboratories and facilities with the purpose to deconflict and disseminate publically DOE's R&D. The Interlaboratory Technology Partnerships Working Group is a powerful grass roots organization outside the beltway. This group operates at the local community and laboratory level where the technology initiates. I have designated the Coordinator as the Secretary's lead federal officer for the group's oversight by reporting its activities to Congress and the interagency. I have authorized about $1 million a year to leverage the Technology Partnerships Working Group's activities by ensuring that it can develop the necessary web interfaces and databases by which the public can easily access DOE's technology. I have expanded the clustering bill that was introduced in the last Congress through the Defense Authorization Act from the NNSA laboratories to the entire DOE complex. This expansion will permit industry to benefit from the entire range of technology R&D across the DOE. If successful, these clusters will strengthen our experience in technology clusters; it will actively involve the state and local communities in encouraging the role that a technology infrastructure will have in their economic development. I have authorized $10 million for these clusters while requiring a 50 percent in-kind funding contribution from the proposed partner. The clustering partner can be a state, university, R&D consortia or business entity. I have given the Secretary discretion to stop this clustering expansion if the pilot effort for the NNSA labs proves unworkable. I have authorized a small- business advocate, to support DOE wide, for what has been a lab by lab policy. Such a small business provision is needed to accommodate the unique needs for R&D collaboration of start up businesses. I have proposed modifying the Department of Energy Organization Act to make it more flexible in entering into alternative research contracts with entities such as R&D consortia. Finally, I have asked the Secretary to examine the need for a policy to move people across the lab fence to start up companies. This policy is balanced against the unique mission areas of each lab. In some cases implementing such a policy may prove unworkable based upon a lab's mission requirement. If such a policy proves unreasonable based upon a particular lab's mission, I have given Secretary the discretion not to implement it. I must emphasize though that half of tech transfer is not just a piece of technology moving across the fence but the movement of people and their know-how to a small start up. Universities are a classic example of the movement of technology and people between their home institution and a small regional technology park. Everyone benefits from this flow in people, the start-up, the lab or facility with a more vibrant workforce surrounding it and the local economy through local high tech business start ups. Mr. President, I want to emphasize that this is not another line item CRADA funding project, its not corporate welfare. This bill takes the tech transfer activities that are naturally occurring in all these varied science mission areas and leverages them with small amounts of funding--about 0.06 percent of DOE's overall budget. Let me summarize once more what I have just outlined is in the proposed bill. First, a small Technology Transfer Coordinator is proposed to be the Secretary's advocate across the Department for uniform policy development and reporting. Second, a small web based interface is proposed to help the public easily access and leverage the R&D activities at all the DOE labs and facilities. Third, I've proposed to help seed small technology clusters local to the labs under merit review and with the discretion not to proceed forward if the FY 2001 NNSA pilot program proves unworkable. Technology clusters are the next evolutionary stage past a static CRADA. Fourth, I've asked the Secretary to implement, where its feasible, a policy where by laboratory personnel can move with the technology to start up a company outside the fence. Fifth, I asked the Secretary to ensure where its reasonable a uniform policy to help small businesses with their unique needs access DOE technology. Like most government programs that come under close scrutiny by Congress, their intent is worthy but the program's size oscillates greatly over time. The pendulum for tech transfer at the DOE is one such program. This program has swung from a $200 million program in the mid 1990's to essentially zero funding in FY 2001 with a minimal headquarter's office to help policy development across its diverse mission areas. This bill establishes what I feel is the right level of tech transfer in a R&D organization by leveraging the existing industrial collaboration that naturally occurs in carrying out their missions. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to reverse a serious decline in our nation's educational capability to produce future nuclear scientists and engineers. This bi-partisan bill which is referred to as the ``Department of Energy University Nuclear Science and Engineering Act'' is co-sponsored by my colleagues Mr. Domenici and Mr. Crapo. Let me outline how serious this decline is, after doing so I will outline its impact on our nation and then discuss how this bill attempts to remedy this situation. As of this year, the supply of four-year trained nuclear scientists and engineers is at a 35-year low. The number of four-year programs across our nation to train future nuclear scientists has declined to approximately 25--a 50 percent reduction since about 1970. Two-thirds of the nuclear science and engineering faculty are over age 45 with little if any ability to draw new and young talent to replace them. Universities across the United States cannot afford to maintain their small research reactors forcing their closure at an alarming rate. This year there are only 28 operating research and training reactors, over a 50 percent decline since 1980. Most if not all of these reactors were built in the late 1950's and early 60's and were licensed initially for 30 to 40 years. As a result, within the next five years the majority of these 28 reactors will have to be relicensed. Relicensing is a long, lengthy process which most universities cannot and will not afford. Interestingly, the employment demand for nuclear scientists and engineers exceeds our nation's ability to supply them. This year, the demand exceeded supply by 350, by 2003 it will be over 400. Our current projections are that in five years 76 percent of the nation's nuclear workforce can retire, the university pipeline of new scientists and engineers is moving in the wrong direction to meet this national problem. These human resource and educational infrastructure problems are serious. The decline in a competently trained nuclear workforce affects a broad range of national issues. We need nuclear engineers and health physicists to help design, safely dispose and monitor nuclear waste, both civilian and military. We rely on nuclear physicists and scientists in the field of nuclear medicine to develop radio isotopes for the thousands of medical procedures performed everyday across our nation--to help save lives. We must continue to operate and safely maintain our existing supply of fission reactors and respond to any future nuclear crisis worldwide--it takes nuclear scientists, engineers and health physicists to do that. Our national security and treaty commitments rely on nuclear scientists to help stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons whether in our national laboratories or as part of worldwide inspection teams in such places as Iraq. Nuclear scientists are needed to convert existing reactors worldwide from highly enriched to low enriched fuels. Nuclear engineers and health physicists are needed to design, operate and monitor future Naval Reactors. The Navy by itself cannot train students for their four year degrees--they only provide advance postgraduate training on their reactor's operation. Basically, we are looking at the potential loss of a 50 year investment in a field which our nation started and leads the world in. What is worse, this loss is a downward self-feeding spiral. Poor departments cannot attract bright students and bright students will not carry on the needed cutting edge research that leads to promising young faculty members. Our system of nuclear education and training, in which we used to lead the world, is literally imploding upon itself. I've laid out in this bill some proposals that I hope will seed a national debate in the upcoming 107th Congress on what we as a nation need to do to help solve this very serious problem. It is not a perfect bill, but I think it should start the ball rolling. I welcome all forms of bipartisan input on it. I hope that my colleagues in the House Science Committee looks favorably at this worthy effort and I would suggest joint hearings so that we as a Congressional body can hear together the testimony on the serious decline that we now face. My staff has worked from consensus reports from the scientific community developed by the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee to the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Science and Technology, in particular its subcommittee on Education and Training. The report is available on the Office's website. I encourage everyone to read and look at these startling statistics. Here is an outline of what is in the bill. First and foremost, we need to concentrate on attracting good undergraduate students to the nuclear sciences. I have proposed enhancing the current program which provides fellowships to graduate students and extends that to undergraduate students. Second, we need to attract new and young faculty. I've proposed a Junior Faculty Research Initiation Grant Program which is similar to the NSF programs targeted only towards supporting new faculty during the first 5 years of their career at a university. These first five years are critical years that either make or break new faculty. Third, I've proposed enhancing the Office's Nuclear Engineering Education and Research Program. This program is critical to university faculty and graduate students by supporting only the most fundamental research in nuclear science and engineering. These fundamental programs ultimately will strengthen our industrial base and over all economic competitiveness. Fourth, I've strengthened the Office's applied nuclear science program by ensuring that universities play an important role in collaboration with the national labs and industry. This collaboration is the most basic form of tech transfer, it is face-to-face contact and networking between faculty, students and the applied world of research and industry. This program will ensure a transition between the student and their future employer. Finally, I've strengthened what I consider the most crucial element of this program--ensuring that future generations of students and professors have well maintained research reactors. I've proposed to increase the funding levels for refueling and upgrading academic reactor instrumentation. I propose to start a new program whereby faculty can apply for reactor research and training awards to provide for reactor improvements. I have proposed a novel program whereby as part of a student's undergraduate and graduate thesis project, they help work on the re- licensing of their own research reactors. This program must be in collaboration with industry which already has ample experience in relicensing. Such a program will once again provide face-to-face networking and training between student, teacher and ultimately their employer. I have proposed a fellowship program whereby faculty can take their sabbatical year at a DOE laboratory. Under this program DOE laboratory staff can co-teach university courses and give extended seminars. This program also provides for part time employment of students at the DOE labs--we are talking about bringing in new and young talent. For the research funds allocated, I have permitted portions be used to operating the reactor during the investigation. I make this allocation provided that the investigator's host institution makes a cost sharing commitment in its operation. My intent is clearly not to make the program simply fund the operations and maintenance of university reactors; it must be tied to the bill's research. The cost sharing insures that the host institution does not simply reallocate the funds already committed to operating the reactor. In making all of these proposals, let me emphasize that each one of these programs I have described is intended to be peer reviewed and to have awards made strictly on merit of the proposals submitted. This program is not a hand out. Each element that I am proposing requires that faculty innovate and compete for these funds. Those institutions that do not win such competitions will have the choice of funding the research reactor activities themselves or consider shutting them down. I have outlined a very serious problem that if not corrected now will cost far more to correct later on. If the program I have outlined is implemented, then it will strengthen our reputation as a leader in the nuclear sciences, strengthen our national security and our ability to compete in the world market place. Mr. President, I ask for unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology to reverse a serious decline in our nation's educational capability to produce future nuclear scientists and engineers. This bi-partisan bill which is referred to as the ``Department of Energy University Nuclear Science and Engineering Act'' is co-sponsored by my colleagues Mr. Domenici and Mr. Crapo. Let me outline how serious this decline is, after doing so I will outline its impact on our nation and then discuss how this bill attempts to remedy this situation. As of this year, the supply of four-year trained nuclear scientists and engineers is at a 35-year low. The number of four-year programs across our nation to train future nuclear scientists has declined to approximately 25--a 50 percent reduction since about 1970. Two-thirds of the nuclear science and engineering faculty are over age 45 with little if any ability to draw new and young talent to replace them. Universities across the United States cannot afford to maintain their small research reactors forcing their closure at an alarming rate. This year there are only 28 operating research and training reactors, over a 50 percent decline since 1980. Most if not all of these reactors were built in the late 1950's and early 60's and were licensed initially for 30 to 40 years. As a result, within the next five years the majority of these 28 reactors will have to be relicensed. Relicensing is a long, lengthy process which most universities cannot and will not afford. Interestingly, the employment demand for nuclear scientists and engineers exceeds our nation's ability to supply them. This year, the demand exceeded supply by 350, by 2003 it will be over 400. Our current projections are that in five years 76 percent of the nation's nuclear workforce can retire, the university pipeline of new scientists and engineers is moving in the wrong direction to meet this national problem. These human resource and educational infrastructure problems are serious. The decline in a competently trained nuclear workforce affects a broad range of national issues. We need nuclear engineers and health physicists to help design, safely dispose and monitor nuclear waste, both civilian and military. We rely on nuclear physicists and scientists in the field of nuclear medicine to develop radio isotopes for the thousands of medical procedures performed everyday across our nation--to help save lives. We must continue to operate and safely maintain our existing supply of fission reactors and respond to any future nuclear crisis worldwide--it takes nuclear scientists, engineers and health physicists to do that. Our national security and treaty commitments rely on nuclear scientists to help stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons whether in our national laboratories or as part of worldwide inspection teams in such places as Iraq. Nuclear scientists are needed to convert existing reactors worldwide from highly enriched to low enriched fuels. Nuclear engineers and health physicists are needed to design, operate and monitor future Naval Reactors. The Navy by itself cannot train students for their four year degrees--they only provide advance postgraduate training on their reactor's operation. Basically, we are looking at the potential loss of a 50 year investment in a field which our nation started and leads the world in. What is worse, this loss is a downward self-feeding spiral. Poor departments cannot attract bright students and bright students will not carry on the needed cutting edge research that leads to promising young faculty members. Our system of nuclear education and training, in which we used to lead the world, is literally imploding upon itself. I've laid out in this bill some proposals that I hope will seed a national debate in the upcoming 107th Congress on what we as a nation need to do to help solve this very serious problem. It is not a perfect bill, but I think it should start the ball rolling. I welcome all forms of bipartisan input on it. I hope that my colleagues in the House Science Committee looks favorably at this worthy effort and I would suggest joint hearings so that we as a Congressional body can hear together the testimony on the serious decline that we now face. My staff has worked from consensus reports from the scientific community developed by the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee to the Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Science and Technology, in particular its subcommittee on Education and Training. The report is available on the Office's website. I encourage everyone to read and look at these startling statistics. Here is an outline of what is in the bill. First and foremost, we need to concentrate on attracting good undergraduate students to the nuclear sciences. I have proposed enhancing the current program which provides fellowships to graduate students and extends that to undergraduate students. Second, we need to attract new and young faculty. I've proposed a Junior Faculty Research Initiation Grant Program which is similar to the NSF programs targeted only towards supporting new faculty during the first 5 years of their career at a university. These first five years are critical years that either make or break new faculty. Third, I've proposed enhancing the Office's Nuclear Engineering Education and Research Program. This program is critical to university faculty and graduate students by supporting only the most fundamental research in nuclear science and engineering. These fundamental programs ultimately will strengthen our industrial base and over all economic competitiveness. Fourth, I've strengthened the Office's applied nuclear science program by ensuring that universities play an important role in collaboration with the national labs and industry. This collaboration is the most basic form of tech transfer, it is face-to-face contact and networking between faculty, students and the applied world of research and industry. This program will ensure a transition between the student and their future employer. Finally, I've strengthened what I consider the most crucial element of this program--ensuring that future generations of students and professors have well maintained research reactors. I've proposed to increase the funding levels for refueling and upgrading academic reactor instrumentation. I propose to start a new program whereby faculty can apply for reactor research and training awards to provide for reactor improvements. I have proposed a novel program whereby as part of a student's undergraduate and graduate thesis project, they help work on the re- licensing of their own research reactors. This program must be in collaboration with industry which already has ample experience in relicensing. Such a program will once again provide face-to-face networking and training between student, teacher and ultimately their employer. I have proposed a fellowship program whereby faculty can take their sabbatical year at a DOE laboratory. Under this program DOE laboratory staff can co-teach university courses and give extended seminars. This program also provides for part time employment of students at the DOE labs--we are talking about bringing in new and young talent. For the research funds allocated, I have permitted portions be used to operating the reactor during the investigation. I make this allocation provided that the investigator's host institution makes a cost sharing commitment in its operation. My intent is clearly not to make the program simply fund the operations and maintenance of university reactors; it must be tied to the bill's research. The cost sharing insures that the host institution does not simply reallocate the funds already committed to operating the reactor. In making all of these proposals, let me emphasize that each one of these programs I have described is intended to be peer reviewed and to have awards made strictly on merit of the proposals submitted. This program is not a hand out. Each element that I am proposing requires that faculty innovate and compete for these funds. Those institutions that do not win such competitions will have the choice of funding the research reactor activities themselves or consider shutting them down. I have outlined a very serious problem that if not corrected now will cost far more to correct later on. If the program I have outlined is implemented, then it will strengthen our reputation as a leader in the nuclear sciences, strengthen our national security and our ability to compete in the world market place. Mr. President, I ask for unanimous consent that the text of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, when the roll is called on the nomination of John Ashcroft to Attorney General of the United States, I will vote ``no.'' The position of Attorney General is not comparable to other Cabinet positions. As head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General has enormous independent responsibility and authority, neither of which is subject directly to direction by the President. The Attorney General also has enormous discretion in choosing where to use the power to prosecute and when to go to court to assert the rights of the People. Historically, the Attorney General is the officer who has enforced the Voting Rights Act and the other civil rights laws which have transformed our nation for the better in the last half century. Given the great power which has been lodged in this office, it is important that the American people have confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the occupant of that office. It is clear to me that many in our country lack that confidence in John Ashcroft. His past actions and statements raise legitimate concerns about how he would carry out the duties of Attorney General. It is those legitimate concerns that lead me to oppose his nomination. What are those concerns? Other Senators have cited actions and statements which they find objectionable. I will mention three. First, the decision to oppose Judge Ronnie White's nomination to the U.S. District Court for Missouri. In my view, the decision to oppose Judge Ronnie White was both unfortunate and unfair. Judge White's record and views were distorted in the debate on the Senate floor. Perhaps even more disturbing was the way in which Senator Ashcroft determined to oppose Judge White's nomination. Each of us here in the Senate knows that we have ample opportunity to voice objections about judicial nominees from our own state long before a nomination ever reaches the Senate floor. In the case of Judge White, Senator Ashcroft chose to delay serious objection to Judge White until the question came before the full Senate for debate. During that debate, Judge White, the highest ranking African-American jurist in Missouri, was publicly humiliated. This treatment was anything but fair. It was a sad day in the United States Senate. A second reason for my opposition to Senator Ashcroft's nomination is his implacable opposition to the appointment of Bill Lann Lee to head up the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department in the previous administration. Senator Ashcroft's opposition was clearly based on Mr. Lee's support for upholding the nation's laws as they pertain to affirmative action. Mr. Lee testified that he would enforce the Supreme Court's rulings on affirmative action, including those that restricted affirmative action. Senator Ashcroft opposed Mr. Lee's nomination, presumably because he feared that Mr. Lee would actually uphold the law of the land in that regard. The third reason for my vote will be Senator Ashcroft's opposition to James Hormel as President Clinton's choice to be Ambassador to Luxembourg. I have never met Mr. Hormel. I was not involved in the committee deliberations on that nomination, but as far as I can determine, Mr. Hormel was opposed because of his admission that he is gay. No other credible explanation for opposing Mr. Hormel has been offered of which I am aware. It is my view that the person entrusted with responsibility to fairly and evenhandedly administer the law should not be suspected of discriminating against any nominee on that basis. Other actions and statements could be cited, but I will stop with those three. They are, in my view, legitimate concerns, and in my view those concerns require a vote against Mr. Ashcroft to be our next Attorney General. The position of Attorney General is far too important to our Nation. Our Nation is one that needs to be united rather than further divided at this point in our history. I do not believe he is the right person for this job. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I don't know where he is. I suggest the Senator from Alaska go right ahead.

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

Mr. BINGAMAN. I will be glad to yield 15 minutes off of my time.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for the Office of Science to develop a robust scientific computing infrastructure to solve a number of grand challenges in scientific computing. This bi- partisan bill, which is referred to as the ``Department of Energy Advanced Scientific Computing Act'' is co-sponsored by Senators Craig, Schumer, and Murray. Before discussing this program in detail, let me briefly frame the proposed effort. First, I will outline the tremendous advances made in the last decade for scientific computing. Second, I will give a few examples of the ``grand challenges'' in scientific computing. Third, I will discuss how the proposed program at the Office of Science will give our nation's scientists the tools to meet these grand challenges. I will conclude by demonstrating how this program integrates with defense related computing programs at the DOE and across the interagency. Experts agree that scientific computing R&D is at a critical juncture. If the breakthroughs proceed as predicted, the information age could affect our everyday lives far beyond what we nonexperts currently grasp. It is terribly important that we, as a nation, ensure that the U.S. maintains a leadership role in scientific computing R&D. If we fall beyond in this rapidly changing field, our nation could lose its ability to control the national security, economic and social consequences from these new information technologies. What are the possible breakthroughs in scientific computing that merit such strong programmatic attention? Within the next five years we expect that advanced scientific computing machines will achieve peak performance speeds of 100 teraflops or 100 trillion arithmetic operations per second; that is 100 times faster than today's most advanced civilian computers. To put things in perspective, the fastest Pentium III available today can perform about 2 gigaflops (2 billion operations per second), so a 100 teraflops machine is about 50,000 times faster than today's fastest Pentium III. We call this new wave of computing ``terascale computing''. This new level of computing will allow scientists and engineers to explore problems at a level of accuracy and detail that was unimaginable ten years ago. I will discuss the scientific and engineering opportunities in more detail later. First, let me discuss some of the challenges in terascale computing. The major advance that led to terascale computing is the use of highly parallel computer architectures. Parallel computers send out mathematical instructions to thousands of processors at once rather than waiting for each instruction to be sequentially completed on a single processor. The problem we face in moving to terascale computers is writing the computer software that utilizes their full performance capabilities. When we say ``peak'' speeds we mean the ability to use the full capability of the computer. This happens very rarely in parallel computers. For example, in 1990 on state-of-the-art Cray supercomputers with about eight processors, we could obtain, on the average, about 40-50 percent of the computer's ``peak'' speed. Today, with massively parallel machines using thousands of processors, we often obtain only 5-10 percent of the machine's ``peak'' speed. The issue is how to tailor our traditional scientific codes to run efficiently on these terascale parallel computers. This is the foremost challenge that must be overcome to realize the full potential of terascale computing. Another problem we face as we move to terascale computing is the amount of data we generate. Consider the following. Your PC, if it is one of the latest models, has a hard drive that will hold about 10 gigabytes of data. If we successfully begin to implement terascale computing, we will be generating ``petabytes'' of data for each calculation. A petabyte of data is one million gigabytes or the equivalent of 100,000 hard drives like the one on your PC. A teraflop machine user will make many runs on these machines. But raw data isn't knowledge. To turn data into knowledge, we must be able to analyze it-- to determine what it is telling us about the phenomena that we are studying. None of the data management methods that we have today can handle petabytes data sets. This is the second challenge that must be overcome. And, many more challenges exist. To make effective use of today's and the future's computing capability we need to establish a scientific program that is radically different from what researchers are used to today. Future scientific computing initiatives must be broad multi-disciplinary efforts. Tomorrow's scientific computing effort will employ not only the physicist who wishes to probe the minute details of solid matter in order to say, built a better magnet, it will include a computer scientist to help ensure that the physicist's software makes efficient use of the terascale computer. Terascale computing will also require mathematicians to develop specialized routines to adapt the solution of the physicist's mathematical equations to these parallel architectures. Finally, terascale computers will require specialists in data networking and visualization who understand how to manage and analyze the massive amounts of data. I note these problems to highlight the complexities of tomorrow's scientific computing environment from the common information technologies that we employ today. However, because computing technology moves at such a rapid rate, elements of the issues that I have described will surely impact us in the near future. Given the impact information technologies have had only in ten years, it is important that we, as a nation, lead the initiative in these breakthroughs so that we can positively control the impact that the these revolutionary technologies will have on our economy and the social fabric of our Nation. What are the important problems that we expect terascale computing to address? We call these problems ``Grand Challenges''. Terascle computing will enable climate researchers to predict with greater certainty how our planet's climate will change in the future, allowing us to develop the best possible strategies and policy for addressing climate change. Terascale computing will help chemists understand the chemical processes involved in combustion, which will translate into more efficient, less polluting engines. Terascale computing will allow material scientists to design nanomaterials atom by atom, which will lead to stronger, yet lighter and hence more energy efficient materials. Terascale computing will assist nanoscience researchers by simulating atom manipulation before undertaking complex and expensive experiments. Nanotechnology will lead to whole new generations of computer chips, information systems, and stronger, yet lighter materials. Finally, terascale computing will enable biologists to understand the structure of the proteins encoded in the human genome, which will lead to better medicines and health for our citizens. These fundamental grand challenge problems are now addressable with the recent advances in scientific computing. Due to the impact the grand challenge problems will have on our lives, we as a nation, must take the lead in their investigation. What are the elements of the proposed effort? The program I propose will build on the Department of Energy's decades of leadership in high performance computing and networks to ensure that terascale computing and petabyte data visualization becomes a positive force for the U.S. The proposed program has four parts. The first part is the establishment of core teams of researchers who specialize in the grand challenge problem itself. An example of a core team is one made up of geologists and geochemists allied with computer scientists and applied mathematicians to write large software programs associated with oil exploration or the diffusion of waste in the subsurface. The scientific simulation software created by these core teams will be the ``engines'' that drive the scientific discovery process. The second element of the program enhances the research efforts in computer science and computational mathematics that underlie this software development effort. These specialists will ensure that the core teams effectively use massively parallel computers--not at the current 5-10 percent but at 50 percent of the computer's peak running speed. These specialists will also develop the software to manage and visualize the petabytes of data that the core teams, as well as the next generation of experimental facilities, generate. Third, this program will fund specialists to develop the networking and electronic collaboration software that will allow researchers all across the U.S.--in national laboratories, universities, and industry to routinely use petabyte data sets. This new networking capability will translate quickly to the private sector in the areas of medicine, business transactions, and education over the internet. Fourth, this program will fund the unique computer hardware required for scientific investigations of the ``Grand Challenges'' on a continuing basis. Many of the grand challenge problems will benefit from specialized computers. This program will fund such specialized computers. For instance, IBM will build in the year 2004 or 2005 a unique 1000 teraflops (1000 trillion operations per second) computer called ``Blue Gene''. Blue Gene will be 500,000 times faster than your desk PC. This machine will be used by DNA researchers to predict the structure of proteins and in doing so allow drugs and medicines to be optimized before they are commercially produced. We propose to place these one-of-a-kind computers at national user facilities and make them available to U.S. researchers in national and government laboratories, universities, and industry. In summary, we are proposing a program that will substantially advance our understanding of complex scientific phenomena that affect our daily lives. At the present we cannot fully understand these phenomena; it is critical that we master it in our national interest so to benefit our nation and its people. Overall, this program will integrate into other DOE advanced computing efforts and into our national strategy for advanced scientific computing. In FY01, the DOE National Nuclear Security Agency, NNSA, funded the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative or ASCI at $477 million dollars. ASCI's mission--to develop the capability to simulate the safety and surety of the nuclear weapons in our stockpile--is critical to the security of our nation. The ASCI program is a focused and classified program with one primary user--the nuclear weapons community. Its problems revolve around materials and plasmas undergoing rapid changes from a nuclear explosion. The Advanced Scientific Computing Program I am proposing is unclassified and covers many other areas of science critical to the long term well being of the nation. This program will involve interaction between researchers at the nation's national and federal laboratories, universities, and industry. That is not to say that there will be no integration between these two worthy and important efforts. Both efforts involve terascale computers, so clearly we expect that many of the central tools common to both in terms of hardware design and underlying software for networks and visualization will be shared. Both programs will benefit by the two diverse communities working towards the common goal of terascale computing. And, the NNSA will be able to infuse fresh ideas from the universities and industry on parallel architectures and data visualization into their efforts in ensuring the surety of our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. Within the U.S. Government, this effort will fall under the purview of the National Coordinating Office for Computing, Information and Communications, ``NCO/CIC''. This Office is charged with coordinating government-sponsored information technology research programs across all of the government agencies. The NCO/CIC provides a forum for DOE to coordinate its scientific computing program with information technology programs in NSF, DOD, NASA, NIH, NOAA, and other government agencies interested in high-performance computing. Although the DOE program is focused on its energy, environmental, and scientific missions, many benefits will be derived by coordinating its activities with related computing activities in other agencies. Finally, I note that in our national implementation plan for ``Information for the Twenty First Century'', the NSF and the DOE were given the leadership for ``Advanced Scientific Computing for Science, Engineering and the Nation''. The program I have outlined supports that role. In summary, I have outlined a scientific computing program that will advance our ability to understand complex but important physical, chemical, and biological phenomena. Advancing our understanding of global climate change will lead to a better understanding on the relationship between our energy consumption and the climate on our planet. Mastering materials and chemical processes at an atomic level will enhance U.S. industrial competitiveness in many areas such as energy efficient materials manufacturing and develop new computer chip technologies. Understanding the flow of contaminants in the groundwater will help develop better strategies for cleaning up DOE's sites and help commercial oil and gas extraction. Predicting the structure of proteins will lead to more effective drugs with minimal side effects. Beyond solution of the ``Grand Challenges'' are the advancements that will be made in advanced computing and networking technologies which will benefit users in areas as diverse as medicine and business. These problems are of national significance to the health of our citizens and our future economy in the 21st century.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for the Office of Science to develop a robust scientific computing infrastructure to solve a number of grand challenges in scientific computing. This bi- partisan bill, which is referred to as the ``Department of Energy Advanced Scientific Computing Act'' is co-sponsored by Senators Craig, Schumer, and Murray. Before discussing this program in detail, let me briefly frame the proposed effort. First, I will outline the tremendous advances made in the last decade for scientific computing. Second, I will give a few examples of the ``grand challenges'' in scientific computing. Third, I will discuss how the proposed program at the Office of Science will give our nation's scientists the tools to meet these grand challenges. I will conclude by demonstrating how this program integrates with defense related computing programs at the DOE and across the interagency. Experts agree that scientific computing R&D is at a critical juncture. If the breakthroughs proceed as predicted, the information age could affect our everyday lives far beyond what we nonexperts currently grasp. It is terribly important that we, as a nation, ensure that the U.S. maintains a leadership role in scientific computing R&D. If we fall beyond in this rapidly changing field, our nation could lose its ability to control the national security, economic and social consequences from these new information technologies. What are the possible breakthroughs in scientific computing that merit such strong programmatic attention? Within the next five years we expect that advanced scientific computing machines will achieve peak performance speeds of 100 teraflops or 100 trillion arithmetic operations per second; that is 100 times faster than today's most advanced civilian computers. To put things in perspective, the fastest Pentium III available today can perform about 2 gigaflops (2 billion operations per second), so a 100 teraflops machine is about 50,000 times faster than today's fastest Pentium III. We call this new wave of computing ``terascale computing''. This new level of computing will allow scientists and engineers to explore problems at a level of accuracy and detail that was unimaginable ten years ago. I will discuss the scientific and engineering opportunities in more detail later. First, let me discuss some of the challenges in terascale computing. The major advance that led to terascale computing is the use of highly parallel computer architectures. Parallel computers send out mathematical instructions to thousands of processors at once rather than waiting for each instruction to be sequentially completed on a single processor. The problem we face in moving to terascale computers is writing the computer software that utilizes their full performance capabilities. When we say ``peak'' speeds we mean the ability to use the full capability of the computer. This happens very rarely in parallel computers. For example, in 1990 on state-of-the-art Cray supercomputers with about eight processors, we could obtain, on the average, about 40-50 percent of the computer's ``peak'' speed. Today, with massively parallel machines using thousands of processors, we often obtain only 5-10 percent of the machine's ``peak'' speed. The issue is how to tailor our traditional scientific codes to run efficiently on these terascale parallel computers. This is the foremost challenge that must be overcome to realize the full potential of terascale computing. Another problem we face as we move to terascale computing is the amount of data we generate. Consider the following. Your PC, if it is one of the latest models, has a hard drive that will hold about 10 gigabytes of data. If we successfully begin to implement terascale computing, we will be generating ``petabytes'' of data for each calculation. A petabyte of data is one million gigabytes or the equivalent of 100,000 hard drives like the one on your PC. A teraflop machine user will make many runs on these machines. But raw data isn't knowledge. To turn data into knowledge, we must be able to analyze it-- to determine what it is telling us about the phenomena that we are studying. None of the data management methods that we have today can handle petabytes data sets. This is the second challenge that must be overcome. And, many more challenges exist. To make effective use of today's and the future's computing capability we need to establish a scientific program that is radically different from what researchers are used to today. Future scientific computing initiatives must be broad multi-disciplinary efforts. Tomorrow's scientific computing effort will employ not only the physicist who wishes to probe the minute details of solid matter in order to say, built a better magnet, it will include a computer scientist to help ensure that the physicist's software makes efficient use of the terascale computer. Terascale computing will also require mathematicians to develop specialized routines to adapt the solution of the physicist's mathematical equations to these parallel architectures. Finally, terascale computers will require specialists in data networking and visualization who understand how to manage and analyze the massive amounts of data. I note these problems to highlight the complexities of tomorrow's scientific computing environment from the common information technologies that we employ today. However, because computing technology moves at such a rapid rate, elements of the issues that I have described will surely impact us in the near future. Given the impact information technologies have had only in ten years, it is important that we, as a nation, lead the initiative in these breakthroughs so that we can positively control the impact that the these revolutionary technologies will have on our economy and the social fabric of our Nation. What are the important problems that we expect terascale computing to address? We call these problems ``Grand Challenges''. Terascle computing will enable climate researchers to predict with greater certainty how our planet's climate will change in the future, allowing us to develop the best possible strategies and policy for addressing climate change. Terascale computing will help chemists understand the chemical processes involved in combustion, which will translate into more efficient, less polluting engines. Terascale computing will allow material scientists to design nanomaterials atom by atom, which will lead to stronger, yet lighter and hence more energy efficient materials. Terascale computing will assist nanoscience researchers by simulating atom manipulation before undertaking complex and expensive experiments. Nanotechnology will lead to whole new generations of computer chips, information systems, and stronger, yet lighter materials. Finally, terascale computing will enable biologists to understand the structure of the proteins encoded in the human genome, which will lead to better medicines and health for our citizens. These fundamental grand challenge problems are now addressable with the recent advances in scientific computing. Due to the impact the grand challenge problems will have on our lives, we as a nation, must take the lead in their investigation. What are the elements of the proposed effort? The program I propose will build on the Department of Energy's decades of leadership in high performance computing and networks to ensure that terascale computing and petabyte data visualization becomes a positive force for the U.S. The proposed program has four parts. The first part is the establishment of core teams of researchers who specialize in the grand challenge problem itself. An example of a core team is one made up of geologists and geochemists allied with computer scientists and applied mathematicians to write large software programs associated with oil exploration or the diffusion of waste in the subsurface. The scientific simulation software created by these core teams will be the ``engines'' that drive the scientific discovery process. The second element of the program enhances the research efforts in computer science and computational mathematics that underlie this software development effort. These specialists will ensure that the core teams effectively use massively parallel computers--not at the current 5-10 percent but at 50 percent of the computer's peak running speed. These specialists will also develop the software to manage and visualize the petabytes of data that the core teams, as well as the next generation of experimental facilities, generate. Third, this program will fund specialists to develop the networking and electronic collaboration software that will allow researchers all across the U.S.--in national laboratories, universities, and industry to routinely use petabyte data sets. This new networking capability will translate quickly to the private sector in the areas of medicine, business transactions, and education over the internet. Fourth, this program will fund the unique computer hardware required for scientific investigations of the ``Grand Challenges'' on a continuing basis. Many of the grand challenge problems will benefit from specialized computers. This program will fund such specialized computers. For instance, IBM will build in the year 2004 or 2005 a unique 1000 teraflops (1000 trillion operations per second) computer called ``Blue Gene''. Blue Gene will be 500,000 times faster than your desk PC. This machine will be used by DNA researchers to predict the structure of proteins and in doing so allow drugs and medicines to be optimized before they are commercially produced. We propose to place these one-of-a-kind computers at national user facilities and make them available to U.S. researchers in national and government laboratories, universities, and industry. In summary, we are proposing a program that will substantially advance our understanding of complex scientific phenomena that affect our daily lives. At the present we cannot fully understand these phenomena; it is critical that we master it in our national interest so to benefit our nation and its people. Overall, this program will integrate into other DOE advanced computing efforts and into our national strategy for advanced scientific computing. In FY01, the DOE National Nuclear Security Agency, NNSA, funded the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative or ASCI at $477 million dollars. ASCI's mission--to develop the capability to simulate the safety and surety of the nuclear weapons in our stockpile--is critical to the security of our nation. The ASCI program is a focused and classified program with one primary user--the nuclear weapons community. Its problems revolve around materials and plasmas undergoing rapid changes from a nuclear explosion. The Advanced Scientific Computing Program I am proposing is unclassified and covers many other areas of science critical to the long term well being of the nation. This program will involve interaction between researchers at the nation's national and federal laboratories, universities, and industry. That is not to say that there will be no integration between these two worthy and important efforts. Both efforts involve terascale computers, so clearly we expect that many of the central tools common to both in terms of hardware design and underlying software for networks and visualization will be shared. Both programs will benefit by the two diverse communities working towards the common goal of terascale computing. And, the NNSA will be able to infuse fresh ideas from the universities and industry on parallel architectures and data visualization into their efforts in ensuring the surety of our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. Within the U.S. Government, this effort will fall under the purview of the National Coordinating Office for Computing, Information and Communications, ``NCO/CIC''. This Office is charged with coordinating government-sponsored information technology research programs across all of the government agencies. The NCO/CIC provides a forum for DOE to coordinate its scientific computing program with information technology programs in NSF, DOD, NASA, NIH, NOAA, and other government agencies interested in high-performance computing. Although the DOE program is focused on its energy, environmental, and scientific missions, many benefits will be derived by coordinating its activities with related computing activities in other agencies. Finally, I note that in our national implementation plan for ``Information for the Twenty First Century'', the NSF and the DOE were given the leadership for ``Advanced Scientific Computing for Science, Engineering and the Nation''. The program I have outlined supports that role. In summary, I have outlined a scientific computing program that will advance our ability to understand complex but important physical, chemical, and biological phenomena. Advancing our understanding of global climate change will lead to a better understanding on the relationship between our energy consumption and the climate on our planet. Mastering materials and chemical processes at an atomic level will enhance U.S. industrial competitiveness in many areas such as energy efficient materials manufacturing and develop new computer chip technologies. Understanding the flow of contaminants in the groundwater will help develop better strategies for cleaning up DOE's sites and help commercial oil and gas extraction. Predicting the structure of proteins will lead to more effective drugs with minimal side effects. Beyond solution of the ``Grand Challenges'' are the advancements that will be made in advanced computing and networking technologies which will benefit users in areas as diverse as medicine and business. These problems are of national significance to the health of our citizens and our future economy in the 21st century.