Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill authorizing the Secretary of Energy to provide for a long term commitment in its Office of Science to the area of nanoscience and nanoengineering. This new area is of fundamental importance for maintaining our global economic leadership in energy technology as well in areas such as microchip design, space and transportation, medicines and biomedical devices. The fields of nanoscience and nanoengineering are so new and broad in their reach that no one industry can support them. They are a perfect example how we in Congress can make a difference to support our nation's technological leadership, a key element of the 21st century global economy. The fields of nanoscience and engineering encompass the ability to create new states of matter by prepositioning the atoms that make up their structure. The physical features that nanoscale R&D will develop are on the order of about 10 nanometers or 1000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. What we are talking about is making materials and devices not by miniaturization, which is a top down approach. Nanoscience is the bottom up fabrication of materials, atom by atom. When you build materials at this level, amazing things begin to happen. We are talking about microchips whose features will shrink by a factor of 100 below where industry projects they will be in the year 2010. These chip features will lead to radical breakthroughs in speed, cost and density of information storage. In the field of medicine and health, we are talking about drugs whose routes of delivery are literally at the molecular level. It will be possible to custom build proteins and other biological materials for future biomedical devices. In the field of energy efficiency, batteries and fuel cells can be built with storage capacities far exceeding our current state of the art. In the transportation industry, it will be possible to make ultra strong and light materials reducing the weight in airplanes, cars and space vehicles. All these breakthroughs in the diverse industries I have discussed will keep the United States' as a global leader in the 21st century economy. The Department of Energy and its Office of Science are uniquely suited to support this critical research. The Office of Science has been at the forefront of conducting nanotechnology research for the past decade through its broad array of materials, physics, chemistry and biology programs. This authorization bill will carry forth four broad objectives of the Office of Science's existing nanotechnology effort, (1) attain a fundamental understanding of nanoscale phenomena, (2) achieve the ability to design bulk materials with desired properties using nanoscale manipulation, (3) study how living organisms produce materials naturally by arranging their atomic structure and implement it into the design process for nanomaterials, (4) develop experimental and computer tools with a national infrastructure to carry out nanoscience. Let me briefly comment on the fourth area in this list. The Office of Science is the nation's leader in developing and managing national user facilities across the broad range of physical sciences. It would be a natural progression for the Office of Science to develop similar user facilities to advance nanoscience. These facilities, located across the United States, will contain unique equipment and computers which will be accessible to individuals as well as multi-disciplinary teams. In the past, Office of Science national user facilities have served as crossing points between the transition from fundamental science to industrial capability. I expect that these nanoscience user facilities will serve as a similar transition point from long term fundamental research into applied industrial know-how. Accordingly, in this authorization bill I have allotted portions of the yearly budget towards developing these unique user facilities. This bill is an important first step in a combined national nanoscience effort which will help to maintain the technological edge of our U.S. industry. I hope that the other federal R&D agencies will make similar commitments in their areas of expertise. Maintaining this edge, by promoting these long term and high risk investigations is something which we cannot expect in the short time frame world of today's industry. It is critical that our U.S. government step into this void, particularly in the area of nanoscience, and provide the necessary intellectual capital to propel our national economy as a leader in the 21st century. I ask for unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce important legislation, to amend the National Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1986. This legislation, the ``Energy Efficient Cost Savings Improvement Act of 2001'' will improve the current law by enhancing and extending the authority relating to energy savings performance contracts of the Federal Government. The benefit to the taxpayer will be not only the realization of greater cost savings as they pertain to older, inefficient Federal buildings but, more importantly, the reduction in the waste of monies spent trying to improve these buildings when other, more cost effective alternatives are available. The National Energy Conservation Policy Act, as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, established a mandate for energy savings in Federal buildings and facilities. Aggressive energy conservation goals were subsequently established by Executive Order 12902, stating that, by 2005, Federal agencies must reduce their energy consumption in their buildings by 30 percent per square foot when compared to 1985 levels. Executive Order 13123 increased this goal to 35 percent by 2010. To help attain these objectives, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 created Energy Savings Performance Contracting, ESPC, which offered a means of achieving this energy reduction goal at no capital cost to the government. That's right--no capital cost to the government, since ESPC is an alternative to the traditional method of Federal appropriations to finance these types of improvements in Federal buildings. Under the ESPC authority, Federal agencies contract with energy service companies, ESCO, which pay all the up-front costs. These costs relate to evaluation, design, financing, acquisition, installation, and maintenance of energy efficient equipment; altered operation and maintenance improvements; and technical services. The ESCO guarantees a fixed amount of energy cost savings throughout the life of the contract and is paid directly from those cost savings. Agencies retain the remainder of the cost savings for themselves and, at the end of the contract, ownership of all property, along with the additional cost savings, reverts to the Federal government. Currently, contracts may range up to 25 years. Over the entire contract period, Federal monies are neither required nor appropriated for the improvements. But, as innovative as the ESPC alternative may be, there is one area in which it falls short--and that is, how to avoid wasting valuable funds improving energy efficiency in a building that has long since passed its useful life. How do you justify energy conservation measures in buildings that are in constant need of maintenance or repair? Facilities that, no matter how much money is invested for renovation, will never meet existing building code requirements? You may save money by improving energy efficiency, but then turn around and reinvest even larger amounts in operating and maintaining a very old facility. Somewhere there has to be a point where we decide there must be other alternatives--and that is exactly what my legislation offers. The most important element of my legislation is in the way it proposes to fund the construction of replacement Federal facilities. The legislation builds upon the existing Energy Savings Performance Contracting and takes it one logical step further--to include savings anticipated from operation and maintenance efficiencies of a new replacement Federal building. Perhaps the easiest way to explain the benefits of this change is by citing an example. In my home state of New Mexico, the Department of Energy Albuquerque Operations office resides in a complex of buildings constructed originally as Army barracks during the Korean War. Although these facilities have been renovated and modified throughout the years, they remain energy inefficient and require high maintenance and operation costs when compared to more contemporary buildings. What's more, over the next seven years, the Operations office will institute additional modifications to meet compliance requirements for seismic, energy savings, and other facility infrastructure concerns (maintenance, environmental, safety and health, etc.) at a cost of $34.2 million. Even with these modifications, we end up with a modernized 50-year-old building that will continue to require expensive maintenance dollars. The estimate to replace the office complex with a new facility, by the way, is $35.3 million. While Congress cannot afford to appropriate funds to build a new facility, we're willing to spend--no, we're forced to waste--almost as much in maintaining an old one. As requested by the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2000, the Department of Energy conducted a feasibility study for replacing the Albuquerque Operations office using an ESPC. The results of the study are enlightening, for it demonstrated that by using anticipated energy, operations, and maintenance efficiencies of a new replacement building over the old one, the cost savings alone pay for the new facility. What's more, the analysis forecasts that after the annual ESPC loan payment is made to the contractor, there is a $1 million per year surplus. Over a 25-year contract, the savings to the taxpayer is $25 million. Finally, I want to draw your attention to the broader implications that this legislation has for Federal agencies and taxpayers alike. The application of authority created by this legislation in the replacement of other Federal buildings could result in billions of dollars of avoided waste. Simply by considering operation and maintenance cost savings, we would reap a double benefit of newer facilities and much needed improvements to the Federal infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. And, since ESCOs typically use local companies to provide construction services, this type of program would have a very beneficial effect on local economies. There is certainly enough work within the Federal government to move forward on this ESPC legislation. To this end, I urge my colleagues to support the bill.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Regardless of the final outcome of the Presidential election, it is my hope that both sides of the aisle will be able to come together next year on a strategy for the continued technological and economic competitiveness of the United States. I hope that support for the work funded by the Office of Science will be the cornerstone of that strategy. Exhibit 1 United States Senate, Washington, DC. The President, The White House, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. President: Thank you for joining us in providing strong support for the Department of Energy's Office of Science in this year's appropriation process. Together we have made great progress in advancing recognition of these critical scientific programs. Yet there remains much more that can be accomplished. Continued growth for these programs on par with that proposed for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) is vital to continued advances in the fields DOE supports and to the training of future scientists and engineers to continue the tremendous advances that America brings to basic science and to the marketplace. You are aware that the Department of Energy (DOE) is the leading source of federal support for the physical sciences in the nation. In the life sciences, the DOE initiated the Human Genome Program and co-manages this enormously important and promising effort with the National Institutes of Health. It also plays a leading role in supporting other biological sciences, environmental sciences, physics, chemistry, materials science, computer science, mathematics, and engineering. As a consequence, the DOE is responsible for a significant portion of federal R&D funding for scientists and students at our colleges and universities. One of the primary responsibilities of DOE's Office of Science is to support large-scale specialized user facilities and large teams of scientists focused on national scientific priorities. This makes the Office of Science unique among, and complementary to, the scientific programs of other federal science agencies, including NIH and NSF. Each year over 15,000 sponsored scientists and students from academe, industry, and government--many funded by agencies other than the DOE--conduct cutting edge experiments at the Department's research facilities. DOE's investments in major facilities, smaller-scale user facilities, and in university-based laboratories not only sets it apart from other federal science agencies, but helps ensure that the nation maintains its world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Economic experts maintain that today's unprecedented economic growth would not have been realized but for the substantial research investments by the public and private sectors over the past several decades. To maintain the tremendous advances that America brings to basic scientific research and into the marketplace, we need to continue to provide strong support for basic research across the scientific disciplines. Sound science policy also demands a balance between support of individual investigator driven science--such as that conducted by the NIH and NSF--and the maintenance and operation of major facilities, smaller specialized facilities, university based research facilities, and scientific teams such as those supported by DOE's Office of Science. The appropriation of $3.19 billion for FY 2001 is only a start at addressing these challenges. Annual increases similar to NIH and NSF are needed and merited by the important and unique work being conducted by the DOE Office of Science. They would also build on the spirit of the Senate's passage of the Federal Research Investment Act (S. 296) which calls for doubling investment in civilian research and development efforts. Support for increases in funding for the DOE Office of Science is critical if we are to attract and retain the best minds, support the construction and operation of modern scientific facilities, and continue to capitalize on the scientific vision that has been the trademark of the Office of Science for so many years. The budget request for FY 2002 is the logical place to continue this effort. We trust you agree and look forward to strengthening our scientific and technological capabilities in FY 2002 and beyond. Sincerely, Jeff Bingaman, Blanche L. Lincoln, Ron Wyden, Carl Levin, John F. Kerry, Frank H. Murkowski, Mike DeWine, Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Slade Gorton, Evan Bayh, Daniel K. Akaka, Paul Sarbanes, Herb Kohl, Patty Murray, John Edwards, Frank R. Lautenberg, John Breaux, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Bill Frist, Fred Thompson.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to address the importance of the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the nation's leading source for fundamental research in the physical sciences for the areas of physics, chemistry, and materials science, and a significant contributor to the biological sciences. Besides funding the individual researcher, the Office of Science leads our nation in providing specialized large user R&D facilities. A partial list of such facilities would include the Stanford Linear Accelerator, the Center for the Microanalysis of Materials at the University of Illinois, The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge, the high energy accelerators at the Fermilab and the National Synchrotron Light Source at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. These user facilities are national treasures. One cannot over emphasize their importance. They are used by not only university researchers from all 50 states but by industry in both the biological and physical sciences. In 1999, there were 5500 users on just the large light sources alone to investigate new structures of matter in both the biological and physical sciences. In the last four years, the number of biological researchers using these facilities has risen by a factor of four and now accounts for 40 percent of all users. Each of these 5500 investigations on just the light sources alone generates new intellectual property--a dominant export in the 21st century global economy. In short, these facilities provide the critical basic R&D that industry cannot and will not fund directly, R&D that is crucial to maintaining the tremendous technological engine of growth that fuels our economy today. I would like to point out that in the 106th Congress there was a large and successful bipartisan campaign in both the House and Senate to support the Office of Science's budget request for Fiscal Year 2001. However, the Office of Science's 2001 budget request only met the level of its 1990 budget as adjusted in year 2000 dollars. In comparison the overall federal R&D budget for the life sciences has increased by 45 percent in the same period. The trends in the neglect of funding for the Office of Science are deeply disturbing and are now beginning to influence the basic indicators of intellectual property generation. If one tracks the submissions by U.S. researchers in some of our most prestigious physics journals you'll find that in 1990 the United States commanded the lead of submissions at about 50 percent worldwide. In 1999 the submission rate has dropped to about 25 percent worldwide. The momentum at a national level in the physical sciences is one of decline. We should be disturbed by this trend--the physical sciences are the foundation of the microchip industry, the telecommunications industry, the transportation industry and the petrochemical industry. We are talking about what fuels our engine of U.S. economic growth-- high technology and maintaining a commanding lead in a 21st century global economy. As the 107th Congress gets ready to start, we must pay more attention to the Office of Science and the role that it plays as a generator of a high tech workforce, intellectual property and economic growth. The Office can play an important role in large multi-user facilities for the development of nanomaterials by developing techniques that can literally position groups of atoms to develop a whole new generation of microchip and structural materials. Leadership in such materials research will help maintain our world dominance in the telecommunications and transportation industries. Yesterday a bipartisan group of this body sent to the President a letter supporting a significant increase in the budget of the Office of Science in fiscal year 2002. This letter follows up on the support that these members expressed earlier this year during the appropriation process and presages a commitment of bipartisan support for the Office of Science in the 107th Congress. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record following my statement.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, in 1998, I co-authored section 3137 of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 (Public Law 105-261), which dealt with research and other activities conducted at Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories and facilities for other entities. Section 3137(b)(2)(A) allows the Secretary of Energy to impose a federal administrative charge in an amount not to exceed 3 percent of the cost of the research carried out by Federal agencies and other entities at DOE laboratories and facilities. My preference in putting forward this language was to eliminate such charges altogether, but I agreed to some flexibility so that such a change could be phased in. We are now in fiscal year 2001, and the President has signed a bill providing for full appropriations for the Department. I would urge at this point that the phase-out of administrative costs be completed by DOE. For example, it makes little sense to have one Federal agency racking up administrative charges against other Federal agencies for the privilege of using Federal facilities. We should encourage such sharing of common assets in the name of efficient administration, instead of keeping incentives to have each agency build its own duplicative equipment and facilities. Additionally, it is in the public interest to encourage outside use of DOE facilities by other entities. This is because outside entities that want to use DOE laboratory facilities are likely to have similar research interests and aims with the DOE researchers at the labs who also use these facilities. The opportunity for enhanced scientific interaction from facilitating their use of these facilities can result in additional scientific efficiencies that will benefit the government. Accordingly, Mr. President, I urge that the Secretary of Energy reduce these administrative costs to zero for fiscal year 2001 and each succeeding fiscal year.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the President of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a man who truly deserves this honor, as there are few men in the world today who have worked so tirelessly for democracy and peace in East Asia. Like so many of the outstanding men of our time, President Kim's life reads something like a novel, from his early childhood as a farmer's son on a small Korean island, to his criticism of the Japanese colonial rule, to his constant fight against dictatorship in South Korea, to his relentless pursuit of a constructive engagement policy with North Korea. No part of his path to the present has been easy, and, he came perilously close to losing his life on several occasions. The stories that are told about his near death experiences at the hands of the military regime in South Korea, and the intervention by the United States to save his life, are legendary in his country. He has been accused of nearly every possible political crime, from subversion to treason. But he has persisted and has succeeded, this in spite of the formidable odds against him. Significantly, South Korea has achieved its status as one of the world's most stable democratic countries because of his efforts, and it is appropriate he should be recognized by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for the impact he has made over the years. As my colleagues know, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in North Korea earlier this week, her stated goal being to improve relations with that country. This follows the trip to North Korea by President Kim, the trip to this country by North Korean Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, and the normalization of relations between North Korea and both Great Britain and Germany--all of which occurred in the last six months and are a direct result of the ``sunshine policy'' that President Kim introduced when he entered office. Needless to say, since the initiation of the policy he has been roundly condemned by government officials and analysts alike as an idealist who did not entirely understand what was at stake in the region. Recall it was only in June of 1999 that North and South Korea fought a battle off the South Korean coast. But President Kim has persevered and, as a result, has brought the region closer to peace and stability than any time in the last fifty years. This is no small accomplishment. There is no doubt that South Korea has some serious challenges to face in the immediate future. Looking at the South Korean economy, although it has recovered substantially from the 1997 financial crisis, it is again showing signs of instability. The reforms that were considered necessary by President Kim for a sustained transformation-- financial, corporate, and governmental--have not yet fully occurred, raising the possibility of another crisis down the road. It is also true that most of the rapprochement that has taken place between South Korea and North Korea is symbolic in nature, leading to hard questions concerning what concrete actions will be undertaken to increase cooperation and decrease tensions in the region. But hopefully the Nobel Peace Prize will provide President Kim with additional leverage for the policies his country has been pursuing, and through greater national and international consensus, he will find a path to the desired end of peace and prosperity in the region. There is no doubt that remarkable steps forward have been taken by all those involved, and I remain optimistic that change can occur. Before she left North Korea, Secretary Albright stated that there were ``many towering peaks ahead'' in the process. This is, no doubt, true. Pragmatic and reciprocal confidence-building mechanisms will be required to convince all the parties involved that the peace process should move forward. But it is also true that the prospects for cooperation are brighter than ever before. And much of this progress can be directly attributed to President Kim. So, Mr. President, I take this opportunity to congratulate President Kim for his selection by the Nobel Committee, to celebrate those things that he has accomplished in his life, and to wish him much success in the days, months, and years that follow.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am introducing legislation today to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to undertake studies of several areas to determine whether these areas merit potential designation as units of the National Park System. I am introducing this legislation at the request of the Administration. I ask unanimous consent that a letter from Donald J. Barry, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, transmitting the proposed legislation, be printed in the Record. I also ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr President, I rise today to clarify my position on the vote we are about to take on the Agriculture Appropriations bill. I voted for the bill because it contains funding for a broad range of programs that are very important to farmers in New Mexico and the rest of the United States. But that said, I would like to express my opposition and disappointment at this time to the way this bill frames our national policy toward Cuba. First, let me say that this bill is remarkable in that it represents a dramatic step forward in how the United States deals with restrictions on sales of food and medicine to designated terrorist states. After considerable debate among my colleagues on this issue, relative consensus has been attained that suggests that unilateral sanctions against countries like North Korea, Sudan, Iran, and Libya are not effective, and that any future economic policy in this regard must include the multi-lateral cooperation of other like-minded governments. Even more importantly, many of my colleagues have come to the conclusion that official sanctions on food and medicine is an inappropriate way to achieve our foreign policy goals. The logic here is straightforward: not only do these sanctions hurt those individuals most in need in these countries--the innocent civilians who are being oppressed by oftentimes ruthless regimes--but they also hurt American businesses that would directly gain from such exports. American farmers in particular suffer under these constraints, and I am convinced those constraints should be removed immediately. I should emphasize here that the elimination of sanctions does not imply that we as a deliberative body agree with the policy pronouncements or activities of terrorist countries. Quite the contrary, they are reprehensible and, as such, we will continue to register our opposition to them at every opportunity. But as a practical matter the elimination of the sanctions does suggest that we finally recognize that we cannot effectively punish dictators or despots through their own people. Perhaps more significantly in this regard, the United States should not be placed in the difficult position of defending such policies as, in my view, they run against some of our most basic values and traditions. It is for this reason that the Agricultural Appropriations bill as it relates to Cuba is seriously flawed. What we have done in this bill is permitted the sale of food and medicine to most of these countries and, moreover, authorized U.S. public and private financing that would allow this to occur. But we have refused to apply these exact same provisions to Cuba. In the case of Cuba, we have permitted the sale of food and medicine, but we have prohibited U.S. financial institutions from assisting in this process. Of course, Cuba can still purchase food or medicine from the United States, but it must do so with its own capital, or with assistance from third-party financial institutions. In short, Cuba must somehow convince a foreign bank to lend it money to purchase food or medicine, an obvious liability given its current situation. Clearly this limitation placed on Cuba defeats the basic rationale underlying the bill, and makes the exercise of sanctions reform almost entirely symbolic in nature. The bottom line is that our farmers will gain little or nothing in terms of increased sales to Cuba, and that is just plain wrong. This bill is also flawed in that it further restricts travel to Cuba, this after several years of moving forward in areas related to increased scientific, academic, social, and cultural exchange. I find this to be an ill-advised provision in that it runs counter to everything we have experienced in Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America in terms of the dynamics of freedom and democratization. For a number of years now I have supported the right of Americans to travel to Cuba, and I continue to do so at this time. I have also suggested that we allow non-governmental organizations to operate in Cuba and to provide information and emergency relief when needed. Furthermore, I believe that Cuban-Americans with relatives still in Cuba should be permitted to visit Cuba to tend to family emergencies. Let me state clearly that I personally deplore the Castro regime and its heavy-handed tactics toward its people. The lack of freedom and opportunity in that country stands in direct contrast to the United States, as well as most countries in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba now stands alone in the West in its inability to allow the growth of democracy and the protection of individual rights. In my view, Cuba is ripe for change, and the best way to achieve positive change is to allow Americans to communicate and associate with the Cuban people on an intensive and ongoing basis, to re-establish cultural activities, and to rebuild economic relations. To allow the Cuban system to remain closed does little to assert United States influence over policy in that country and it does absolutely nothing in terms of creating the foundation for much-needed political economic transformation. The spread of democracy comes from interaction, not isolation. So for all the positive attributes contained within this bill, I see the provisions as they relate to Cuba to represent a serious step backward that will ultimately harm, not help, the U.S. national interest. This is an anachronistic policy that does no one any good. It is my hope that what some of my colleagues are saying today on the floor is true, that this is merely an initial compromise that lays the foundation for more significant change through legislation in the future. If this is correct, I look forward to working with them to ensure that more constructive policy is indeed enacted. I am convinced it is long overdue.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I thank the Senator for addressing this issue. We are clearly looking, in the next 15 years, at a substantial relicensing workload for hydropower facilities. No one can be against wanting to conduct that process in an efficient and informed manner. But, these projects have multiple impacts and benefits that cut across a wide range of issues that are important to the citizens who live in the vicinity of those projects and to the country at large. Any changes to the current system should deal with these multiple impacts in a sensible way. I fully expect that the hydropower relicensing issue will remain as a topic of concern on our Committee agenda in the next Congress, and I am ready to engage in discussions on how to move forward on this issue in a bipartisan fashion. abatement program funding

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Colorado. Senator Campbell has worked very hard on this. This has been a major project of his. I do not know how many conversations he and I have had on this subject in the last 2 years, but I can tell you it has been many. There have been many of those conversations. In 1988, Congress passed legislation endorsing a settlement of Indian water rights for the southern Ute and Ute Mountain Indian Tribe which had been agreed to by the Departments of Justice and Interior, the two tribes, and the State of Colorado and the State of New Mexico. But that 1988 legislation envisioned an Animas-La Plata River Project that would meet a number of regional water needs, including the water for the Navajo Nation and the non-Indian communities. The project envisioned by that legislation has proven infeasible to implement in terms of the cost and also in terms of the environmental consequences, but the need to settle these water rights and live up to the national commitment to these two tribes remains. The two Ute tribes and their neighbors within the San Juan basin have developed a revamped water allocation for a downsized Animas project which the Ute tribes will agree to as a settlement of their water rights. The allocation also supplies a much needed water supply to the Shiprock community of the Navajo Nation and continues the concept that tribes in non-Indian communities must work together collaboratively on a regional basis to solve their water needs. The downsized project is in accordance with the final environmental impact statement issued by the Department of the Interior. In the judgment of the Secretary of Interior, it would comply with Federal environmental laws. He has made that very clear. The Secretary has determined that the project authorized in this legislation also will meet the trust responsibilities of the United States with regard to the settlement of the water rights of these two tribes. This is a project and an issue that has been a concern of people in the northwest part of New Mexico for many years. I have seen various versions of this project discussed and considered over this period of time. I am persuaded that this final so-called ``Animas Lite,'' which is what is generally discussed, or the name that has come to be attached to what is now being considered by the Senate, is a good resolution of many conflicting and competing concerns. I hope very much that we can pass this bill, that we can do so without amendment, and that we can send it to the President for his action. Again, I commend Senator Campbell for his hard work in getting us to this point. I hope very much we can follow his lead and send this legislation to the President for his signature. Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield back my time.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased that the Conference Report for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 includes a program that I championed in the Senate during its consideration of this bill, along with Senator Thompson and others. This program addresses occupational illnesses scientifically found to be associated with the DOE weapons complex, that have occurred and are now occurring because of activities during the Cold War. This new program was a joint effort of a bipartisan group of Senators and House Members. I would like to knowledge the hard work by my staff and by the staff for Senator Fred Thompson, Senator George Voinovich, Senator Mike DeWine, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Senator Ted Kennedy. We worked with the Administration, with worker groups, with manufacturers, and with staff from the House of Representatives. The workers in the DOE nuclear weapons complex, both at the production plants and the laboratories, helped us win the Cold War. But that effort left a tragic environmental and human legacy. We are spending billions of dollars each year on the environmental part-- cleaning up the physical infrastructure that was contaminated. But we also need to focus on the human legacy. This program is an attempt to put right a situation that should not have occurred. But it proposes to do so in a way that is based on sound science. The amendment focuses federal help on three classes of injured workers. The first group is workers who were involved with beryllium. Beryllium is a non-radioactive metal that provokes, in some people, a highly allergic lung reaction. The lungs become scarred, and no longer function. The second group is workers who dug the tunnels for underground nuclear tests and are today suffering from chronic silicosis due to their occupational exposures to silica, which were not adequately controlled by DOE. The third group of workers are those who had dangerous doses of radiation on the job. Along with the workers who are covered by the compensation program being created by this legislation, we are reaching back to the uranium miners and millers who were compensated under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, and providing them with a similar benefit of a total of $150,000 and ongoing medical care. I think that this is only a matter of simple justice, and I strongly supported its inclusion in the current legislation. Early in this Congress, I introduced legislation that would have provided $200,000 in compensation for the uranium miners and millers--the same financial payment that was initially proposed for the DOE workers in this legislation. I am glad that the final result is a better deal for the persons being compensated under RECA, as well as the persons being compensated under this new program. For the workers who were employed at numerous current and former DOE facilities, we have included a general definition of DOE and other type of facilities in the legislation, in lieu of including a list that might be incomplete. For purposes of helping in the implementation of this legislation, I would like to ask unanimous consent that a non- exclusive list of the DOE-related facilities intended to be covered under this amendment be printed in the Record following my statement. (See Exhibit 1.) For beryllium workers, there are tests today that can detect the first signs of trouble, called beryllium sensitivity, and also the actual impairment, called chronic beryllium disease. If you have beryllium sensitivity, you are at a higher risk for developing chronic beryllium disease. You need annual check-ups with tests that are expensive. If you develop chronic beryllium disease, you might be disabled or die. This amendment sets up a federal worker's compensation program to provide medical benefits to workers who acquired beryllium sensitivity as a result of their work for DOE. It provides both medical benefits and a lump-sum payment of $150,000 for workers who suffer disability or death from chronic beryllium disease. For radiation, the situation is more complex. Radiation is proven to cause cancer in high doses. But when you look at a cancer tumor, you can't tell for sure whether it was caused by an alpha particle of radiation from the workplace, a molecule of a carcinogen in something you ate, or even a stray cosmic ray from outer space. But scientists can make a good estimate of the types of radiation doses that make it more likely than not that your cancer was caused by a workplace exposure. The original legislative proposal passed by the Senate put the Department of Health and Human Services, HHS, in charge of making the causal connection between specific workplace exposures to radiation and cancer. Within the HHS, it was envisioned that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH, take the lead for the tasks assigned by this legislation. This assignment followed a decision made in DOE during the Bush Administration, and ratified by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993, to give NIOSH the lead in identifying levels of exposure at DOE sites that present employees with significant health risks. While in the final legislative text, the President was assigned these responsibilities, I think it is clearly the intent of the Senate proponents that he delegate these authorities as laid out in the original Senate amendment. HHS was also given a Congressional mandate, in the Orphan Drug Act, to develop and publish radioepidemiological tables that estimate ``the likelihood that persons who have or have had any of the radiation related cancers and who have received specific doses prior to the onset of such disease developed cancer as a result of those doses.'' I would like to ask unanimous consent that a more detailed discussion of how the Senate proponents envision these guidelines being used be included as an exhibit at the end of my remarks. (See Exhibit 2.) Under guidelines that would be developed and used under this legislation, if your radiation dose was high enough to make it at least as likely as not that your cancer was DOE-work-related, you would be eligible for compensation for lost wages and medical benefits. The HHS-based method will work for the many of the workers at DOE sites. But it won't work for a significant minority who were exposed to radiation, but for whom it would be infeasible to reconstruct their dose. There are several reasons why reconstructing a dose might be this infeasibility might exist. First, relevant records of dose may be lacking, or might not exist altogether. Second, there might be a way to reconstruct the dose, but it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. Finally, it might take so long to reconstruct a dose for a group of workers that they will all be dead before we have an answer that can be used to determine their eligibility. One of the workers who testified at my Los Alamos hearing might be an example of a worker who could fall into the cracks of a system that operated solely on dose histories. He was a supervisor at what was called the ``hot dump'' at Los Alamos. All sorts of radioactive materials were taken there to be disposed of. It is hard to reconstruct who handled what. And digging up the dump to see what was there would not only be very expensive, it would expose new workers to radiation risks that could be large. There are a few groups of workers that we know, today, belong in this category. They are specifically mentioned in the definition of Special Exposure Cohort. For other workers to be placed in this special category, the decision that it was infeasible to reconstruct their dose would have to be made both by the President (or his designee) and by an independent external advisory committee of radiation, health, and workplace safety experts. We allow groups of workers to petition to be considered by the advisory committee for inclusion in this group. Once a group of workers was placed in the category, it would be eligible for compensation for a fixed list of radiation-related cancers. The program in this amendment provides for a lump-sum payment, combined with ongoing medical coverage under language identical to that used to provide medical coverage under the Federal Employee's Compensation Act, or FECA, in section 8103 of title 5, United States Code. Since Congress has consciously mirrored FECA for one important part of this new program, I hope that the Administration, in implementing our legislation, looks to FECA as a precedent for establishing other parameters for this program. The legislation before us also invites the Administration to submit further legislative proposals to help implement this new program. In my view, it was not a good policy call for Congress to enact this program without more direction on the details of how it should operate, as was the case in the original legislative proposal passed by the Senate. I believe that the flexibility that the Congress has provided to the Executive Branch should be used to the fullest extent by the President to put the necessary implementing framework in place by Executive Order. If there are changes needed to the law that we have passed, they should be sent up by the President forthwith. But I do not have much confidence that Congress will be able to enact additional legislation on this program before the deadline date of July 31, 2001. We have a duty to take care of sick workers from the nuclear weapons complex today. It is a doable task, and a good use of our national wealth at a time of budget surpluses. I congratulate my colleagues on having achieved a successful result from our initial bipartisan amendment. Exhibit 1.--Examples of DOE and Atomic Weapons Employer Facilities That Would Be Included Under the Definitions in This Amendment (Not an Exclusive List of Facilities) Atomic Weapons Employer Facility: The following facilities that provided uranium conversion or manufacturing services would be among those included under the definition in section 3503(a)(4): Allied Signal Uranium Hexafluoride Facility, Metropolis, Illinois. Linde Air Products facilities, Tonowanda, New York. Mallinckrodt Chemical Company facilities, St. Louis, Missouri. Nuclear Fuels Services facilities, Erwin, Tennessee. Reactive Metals facilities, Ashtabula, Ohio. Department of Energy Facility: The following facilities (including any predecessor or successor facilities to such facilities) would be among those included under the definition in section 3503(a)(15):. Amchitka Island Test Site, Amchitka, Alaska. Argonne National Laboratory, Idaho and Illinois. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York. Chupadera Mesa, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Fermi Nuclear Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois. Fernald Feed Materials Production Center, Fernald, Ohio. Hanford Works, Richland, Washington. Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho. Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, Burlington, Iowa. Kansas City Plant, Kansas City, Missouri. Latty Avenue Properties, Hazelwood, Missouri. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California. Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, including related sites such as Acid/Pueblo Canyons and Bayo Canyon. Marshall Islands Nuclear Test Sites, but only for period after December 31, 1958. Maywood Site, Maywood, New Jersey. Middlesex Sampling Plant, Middlesex, New Jersey. Mound Facility, Miamisburg, Ohio. Niagara Falls Storage Site, Lewiston, New York. Nevada Test Site, Mercury, Nevada. Oak Ridge Facility, Tennessee, including the K-25 Plant, the Y-12 Plant, and the X-10 Plant. Paducah Plant, Paducah, Kentucky. Pantex Plant, Amarillo, Texas. Pinellas Plant, St. Petersburg, Florida. Portsmouth Plant, Piketon, Ohio. Rocky Flats Plant, Golden, Colorado. Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico. Santa Susanna Facilities, Santa Susanna, California. Savannah River Site, South Carolina. Waste Isolation Pilot Project, Carlsbad, New Mexico. Weldon Spring Plant, Weldon Spring, Missouri. Exhibit 2.--Determining ``Causation'' for Radiation and Cancer Different cancers have different relative sensitivities to radiation. In 1988, the White Office of Science and Technology Policy endorsed the use by the Veterans Administration of the concept of ``probability of causation'' (PC) in adjudicating claims of injury due to exposure to ionizing radiation. Given that a radiogenic cancer cannot be differentiated from a ``spontaneously'' occurring one or one caused by other dietary, environmental and/or life-style factors, the PC--that is, the ``likelihood'' that a diagnosed cancer has been ``caused'' by a given radiation exposure or dose--has to be determined indirectly. To this end, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was tasked to develop radioepidemiology tables. These tables, which are currently being updated by the NIH, include data on 35 cancers compared to the 13 cancers in the original tables from 1985. These tables account for the fact that different cancers have different relative sensitivities to ionizing radiation. The determination of a PC takes into account the radiation dose and dose rate, the types of radiation exposure (external, internal), age at exposure, sex, duration of exposure, and (for lung cancer only) smoking history. Because a calculated PC is subject to a variety of statistical and methodological uncertainties, a ``confidence interval'' around the PC is also determined. Thus, a PC is calculated as a single, ``point estimate'' along with a 99% confidence interval which bounds the uncertainty associated with that estimate. If you have 99% certainty that the upper bound of a PC is greater than or equal to 0.5 (i.e., a 50% likelihood of causality), then the cancer is considered at least as likely as not to have been caused by the radiation dose used to calculate the PC. For example, for a given worker with a particular cancer and radiation exposure history, the PC may by 0.38 with 99% confidence interval of 0.21 to 0.55. This means that it is 38% likely that this worker's cancer was caused by this radiation dose, and we can say with 99% confidence that this estimate is between 21% and 55%. Since the upper bound, 55% is greater than 50%, this person's cancer would be considered to be at least as likely as not to have been caused by exposure to radiation, and the person would be eligible for benefits under the proposed program.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise to advise Members of the Senate that New Mexico lost a very distinguished citizen and a good friend with the death of E.S. Johnny Walker on Sunday at the age of 89. His life of public service began with 4 years in the Army in World War II. Subsequently, it included two terms in our State legislature in the House of Representatives in Santa Fe, followed by service as commissioner of our public lands in New Mexico and commissioner of the bureau of revenue. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1964 and served two terms here in Washington representing New Mexico in the House of Representatives. Johnny is survived by his wife Polly, to whom he was married for 63 years; also by their two children, Mike Walker and Janet Walker Steele; also by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, colleagues, and, of course, many friends. I am proud to say that his friends included my family and, of course, me. We have known the Walkers for decades. I fondly recall his friendship with my parents and with my uncle, John Bingaman, during the time when I was growing up in Silver City. He was a ``man of the people'' in the very best sense of that phrase. He worked very hard for the interest of the people of New Mexico, and he will be remembered warmly in our State for his humanity and for his great service.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today I rise to support the passage of H.R. 3244, a bill to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, VAWA. In 1994, when I voted in favor of the Violence Against Women Act I supported the purposes of the legislation and I believed the grants authorized in VAWA would provide the resources needed by New Mexico organizations, local governments and tribal governments to tackle the growing problem of domestic violence. Now it is six years later and I am pleased to report that I have witnessed first-hand the many benefits of VAWA to New Mexico. I now realize how important VAWA was to New Mexico and I fully appreciate the strides New Mexico was able to make as a result of this legislation. Women and families in New Mexico have benefitted tremendously from VAWA and I rise today to lend my support to passage of VAWA II. In New Mexico, we now have several organizations that are devoted to stopping violence against women. One example is the PeaceKeepers Domestic Violence Program based at San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico. PeaceKeepers is a domestic violence program that serves individuals that reside within the Eight Northern Pueblos which include the pueblos of Nambe, Picuris, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, San Juan, Santa Clara, Tesuque and Taos. Peacekeepers is a consortium of individuals and is comprised of social workers, counselors, victims advocates, a civil attorney and a prosecutor. Because of VAWA grants, PeaceKeepers has been able to implement a comprehensive approach to address domestic violence in Indian Country. The social workers and counselors provide counseling to victims, batterers and children of victims. Approximately twenty men have completed the 24 week batterers therapy program and are working to improve their lives and the lives of their families. The victims advocates provide support in court, assist with obtaining and enforcing protection orders and aid victims with legal matters and basic housing needs. The prosecutor on the Peacekeepers panel is made possible because of a VAWA Rural Victimization grant. PeaceKeepers also provides training for tribal courts, law enforcement and tribal government personnel on domestic violence issues. The civil attorney also assists victims with legal assistance on matters such as child support, custody issues and protection orders. Safety for victims and accountability for offenders is the primary goal of PeaceKeepers. In the end, PeaceKeepers is about providing information, options and advocacy to victims of domestic violence. When VAWA passed in 1994, the States and local organizations were finally provided with the resources they needed to implement programs to respond to the problem of violence against women. I am told repeatedly by sheriffs in counties throughout New Mexico that their urgent calls are usually the result of a domestic violence situation occurring. While VAWA has not stopped domestic violence from occuring, it has provided law enforcement agencies and courts with the training and resources they need to respond to domestic violence cases. Most importantly, VAWA has provided States and local organizations with the resources to begin tackling the underlying problems of domestic violence and given them resources to develop innovative methods to start breaking the cycle of violence in our communities. Another organization in New Mexico that I am proud to support is the Esperanza Domestic Violence Shelter in northern New Mexico. I became acquainted with Esperanza a few years ago when they approached me because they were having trouble meeting the needs of their community. Esperanza operates in four counties and in 1998, Esperanza helped more than 2,000 people, including 1,100 victims of domestic violence, 510 children and teens and 424 abusers. As the name indicates, Esperanza offers women and families hope. Hope that they can live in a safe home, hope that they can survive outside of an abusive relationship and hope that they can offer a better life for their children. Esperanza has provided the supportive services needed for victims that reside in the extensive rural areas of New Mexico--victims who were often overlooked before VAWA. I am very disappointed that it has taken so long for the Senate to take up and reauthorize VAWA. Last year when the reauthorization bill was introduced by Senator Biden, I agreed to cosponsor the legislation because I understand the importance of VAWA to New Mexico. Since 1994, New Mexico agencies have received over $17 million in VAWA grants. These VAWA grants have reached all four corners of my state and they have impacted the lives of thousands of New Mexicans. One of the benefits of VAWA is that it authorized grants to address a variety of problems associated with violence against women. In 1999, Northern New Mexico Legal Services, Inc. received $318,500 under the Civil Legal Assistance grant program. In 1998, the City of Albuquerque received $482,168 under the Grants to Encourage Arrest Policies grant program. And between 1996 and this year, 20 New Mexico organizations received grants under the Rural Domestic Violence and Child Abuse grant program--20 grants totaling over $6.5 million. In addition, Indian tribes in New Mexico have benefitted significantly from the passage of VAWA. So far, nine tribal governments and tribal-related organizations received nearly $2 million in grants under the Violence Against Women Discretionary Grants for Indian Programs. I am pleased to see that the pueblos of Acoma, Jemez, Laguna, San Felipe, Santa Ana and Zuni have been proactive and sought out these VAWA grants to make their pueblos a safer place for women and a better place for families. The State of New Mexico has also benefitted enormously from VAWA. Since 1995, the New Mexico Crime Victims Reparations Commission has been awarded over $6 million in VAWA funds. Unless VAWA is reauthorized, domestic violence shelters in New Mexico will be closed, rape crisis centers will be shut down and thousands of victims of violence will be left without the options they have been provided under VAWA. This isn't speculation. I have received calls from police chiefs, shelter directors, church leaders, and other citizens who have told me that they will have to shut down their programs unless VAWA is reauthorized. Moreover, many prosecutors in New Mexico will lose the resources they have utilized to prosecute crimes against women. Because of the objections to bringing up VAWA for debate in the Senate, the original VAWA was allowed to expire on September 30th. That should not have happened. The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of reauthorizing VAWA by a vote of 415-3 before VAWA expired. We need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and we need to do it now. While violence in the United States has fallen dramatically over the past 6 years, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that almost one- third of women murdered each year are killed by a husband or boyfriend. I believe the drop in crime we have experienced over the past 6 years is partly attributable to the passage of VAWA and the resources it made available to combat violence against women. We should not turn back the clock and go back to the level of violence we experienced in 1993. We should not go back to the days when people did not discuss domestic violence and women in abusive relationships lacked options for them and their children. I commend Senator Leahy and Senator Biden for their work on VAWA and their commitment to stopping domestic violence in this country. The amendments to VAWA will take the program further and expand the number of people benefitting from VAWA grants. I am pleased that the amount available for use by Indian tribal governments under the STOP grants was increased from 4 percent to 5 percent. In addition, 5 percent of the $40 million Rural Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Enforcement grants will be set aside for use by Indian tribal governments in the new bill. I am also pleased to see that institutions of higher education will be provided with resources to address violence on college campuses. Schools will now be able to utilize $30 million in VAWA grants to install lighting and other deterrent measures to enhance the security of their campuses. I also support the addition of transitional housing assistance to the VAWA. Many individuals who stay in abusive relationships often do so because they are financially dependent on their abuser. Transitional housing assistance will provide these victims and their families with temporary housing while they regain their financial independence. The battered immigrant women provision is also important to many New Mexico residents. No longer will battered immigrant women and children be faced with deportation for reporting an abuser on whom they may be dependent on for an immigration benefit. No person residing in the United States should be immune from prosecution for committing a violent crime because of a loophole in an immigration law. Mr. President, VAWA is worthy legislation that is good for New Mexico and women and families across the country. VAWA should be reauthorized and passed in the form proposed today.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his courtesy in yielding me some time. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as in morning business for 3 minutes.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today with my colleague Senator Domenici of New Mexico to introduce legislation that is intended address a significant problem facing some rural states today--a serious shortage of physicians. The bills we are introducing are intended to demonstrate that physician shortages, and recruitment and retention problems can be ameliorated in some rural states by a multifaceted approach, including providing incentives for physicians in training to practice in areas where they are most likely to be needed. The Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) has for some time held the position that the U.S., in the aggregate, has enough, if not too many, physicians. However, COGME's most recent report, published in March 1999, documented that almost half of the counties in our country are designated as Health Professional Shortage Areas--a remarkable finding, given almost three decades of Federal government efforts to address the geographic maldistribution of physicians. In our State of New Mexico we have physician shortages that are worsening, with certain types of speciality physicians being in the shortest supply. According to 1998 data from the American Medical Association, New Mexico is 20 percent below the U.S. national average of 224 patient care physicians per 100,000 persons. In 15 New Mexico counties, there is no more than 1 physician or less per 1000 population, and 1 New Mexico county has no physician at all to care for its population. And, Mr. President, New Mexico is not alone. Other rural states are also suffering. A recent Health Care Finance Administration report showed that there has been a decline over the past 5 years in certain types of specialty physicians either practicing medicine or participating in the Medicare program in many rural states. The worst loss for New Mexico has occurred in thoracic surgery with a 35 percent decline. Several other specialities, such as urology, ophthalmology, and psychiatry, are not that far behind. The only significant physician growth that can be seen is in primary care and that's still not adequate. With losses occurring in certain physician specialties, problems for all physicians' practices are continuing to worsen--they can't refer patients to specialists without great difficulty. For example, in New Mexico, there have been accounts of patients being referred to ear, nose and throat doctors having to wait up to 9 months for a non-emergency consultation. Without a timely in-state consultation, the patient's primary care physician may have to refer the patient to an out of state speciality physician for care. This is frustrating for the physician, and costly and time consuming for the patient. As many of you know, New Mexico is one of the nation's poorest states, with a large uninsured population. In 1998, it ranked 48th in the amount of personal income per capita. For many physicians, this means they may never get paid for much of the work they do. The physician shortage is becoming so severe in our state that last year the New Mexico Medical Society conducted a survey of our physicians to try to find out about how doctors are faring in the state. The response from New Mexico physicians was shocking--42 percent of the physicians surveyed said that they are seriously or somewhat seriously considering leaving their medical practice, and 40 percent said that reimbursement rates are a significant problem. Comments offered by physicians in this survey were very clear--``I make a good income, but to do that I have to work 65-70 hours a week, in, and week out. The reimbursement rates are such that I could move to a lot of nice places and maintain my income and work three-quarters as much. Family life is important.'' Almost weekly, New Mexico newspapers report about problems caused by provider shortages. On September 7th, the Albuquerque Journal carried a story about a women who had fallen, bruised her spinal cord, and rapidly developed paralysis of both hands and arms. She had to wait 18 hours to be seen on an emergency basis because of a critical shortage of neurosurgeons in Albuquerque, New Mexico's largest city. Stories like this one are becoming more and more common. There are many accounts of New Mexicans having to wait up to 9 months for an appointment to be seen by a specialist, and of newborns having to be transported out of state because the neonatal intensive care unit does not have adequate physician coverage. My offices in Washington, DC, and New Mexico are constantly receiving letters and phone calls, and visits from constituents who want to tell us about physician shortages, physicians leaving the State of New Mexico, and the loss of their individual providers. They can't understand why this happening in a country with the greatest healthcare system in the world. All of these problems clearly show that New Mexico's health care system has broken down. However, it is not only New Mexico that is experiencing these problems. Other rural states are experiencing similar problems--they have become states that are being avoided by physicians entering practice. With the population in these states continuing to grow, the problem just gets worse. If this situation is not addressed right now, it will result in a complete breakdown of an already fragile health care delivery system. This is why we are each introducing this package of legislation today. These two bills, the ``Rural States Physician Recruitment and Retention Demonstration Act of 2000, will together, when enacted, demonstrate that physician shortages and recruitment and retention problems can be ameliorated in rural states by instituting a comprehensive plan that provides for a proper physician speciality mix that will address the needs of a rural state's population. My legislation will require the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a demonstration program that will: Target up to a 15 percent increase in physician residency slots identified to be in short supply in demonstration states. These expanded residency slots would carry with them a legally binding commitment to practice in the demonstration state on a year of training for year of service basis. Establish a loan repayment program to provide incentives for physicians in identified shortage specialities to locate their practices in demonstration states. This program will help physicians repay their educational loans on a year of service for a year of loan repayment basis in return for a commitment to practice in the demonstration state. Develop a demonstration state health professional data base to capture and track the practice characteristics and distribution of licensed health care providers. This data will be used to develop a baseline and track changes in a demonstration state's health professions workforce, target this demonstration program to identified physician specialities and determine a state's need for other types of supportive health professionals. Provide for an evaluation of each element of our comprehensive demonstration by the Council on Graduate Medical Education (COGME) for physician workforce issues, and by Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (Medpac) for Medicare reimbursement and Medicare funded graduate medical education positions. As I mentioned earlier, one of the primary reason physicians report they are leaving New Mexico is because reimbursement is too low, particularly when combined with other factors like long work days, inability to recruit speciality physicians, and provide comprehensive patient care in a reasonable period of time. That's why the second part of this package, the Physician Recruitment and Retention Act of 2000, consists of legislation that will provide physicians that are practicing in demonstration states with a special 5 percent Medicare part B reimbursement rate increase. This increase will provide a financial incentive to physicians to continue to practice in the underserved states and also to continue to participate in the Medicare program. Both Senator Domenici and I anticipate that by the end of this demonstration program, physician shortages, particularly in specific physician specialities, will be greatly diminished or even have disappeared. Mr. President, the health care system in New Mexico is near collapse for reasons too numerous and complex to get into here. These bills we are introducing today, in combination with the fixes we are making to the problems resulting from the BBA of 1997, may stave off disaster for a while. I certainly hope they will. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today I'm introducing a bill designed to lower the cost of the government's information technology systems and improve how those systems serve our citizens by encouraging greater use of a ``share-in-savings'' approach to contracting for information technology (IT). Under a share-in-savings approach, the government contracts with a company to provide an improved, lower cost IT service and the company pays the up-front costs of the project, which is not the usual practice. In return, the contractor gets paid a portion of the money saved by the government under the new arrangement. Essentially, the contractor bears the capital costs needed for the government to save some money and has a strong incentive to decrease the government's costs because they get paid a portion of any savings. Although this approach to IT contracting is authorized as a pilot program under the Clinger-Cohen Act, I understand the executive branch has not made much use of this approach to date. Hence, I believe there are opportunities for greater creativity in this area if we give the agencies greater incentives. Basically, my bill does three things. First, and most importantly, it gives agencies an incentive to try a share-in-savings approach by letting them keep up to half the government's net savings to use for additional IT projects, rather than having all the net savings going back to the Treasury. It's just human nature that if you ask someone to do something risky--like a new IT system--but all the benefits go elsewhere, they're not going to be very inclined to do it. That is, unless they get to keep some of the benefits to improve their own operations--which is what this bill let's them do. The point here is that the more agency managers actually are willing to use this approach, the more money the taxpayer will save in the long run. There's precedent for this with regard to certain Energy Savings Performance Contracts. Under a provision applicable to the Department of Defense, local base commanders can keep a portion of the savings from those contracts to purchase more energy saving equipment or even for morale and recreation purposes. Second, my bill gives the executive branch as a whole an incentive to try share-in-savings contracting for IT by allowing the pilot program to graduate to a regular authority once a significant number of projects have been done, the approach has been found to be useful, and guidance on how to use the authority has been issued. This gives the top levels of the executive branch a goal to push toward. Finally, my bill will ease implementation of share-in-savings contracting by allowing agency program managers to approve the projects, thereby giving them greater autonomy and streamlining the selection process. Currently, share-in-savings IT projects must be approved by the Administrator of Federal Procurement, a very high level in the executive branch. In sum, my bill will encourage greater use of the share-in-savings approach to IT contracting under the Clinger-Cohen Act by giving the agencies a portion of the savings to reinvest; the executive branch a goal; and the program managers more autonomy. I had originally planned to introduce this as an amendment to the Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill. But, because it doesn't look like we'll have a chance to really debate that bill this year, I've decided to introduce this bill today to get my proposal before the Senate. Now, to give some credit where credit is due, I got interested in this topic because of a piece I saw in Roll Call on E-Government by Patricia McGinnis of the Council for Excellence in Government. In it she mentioned the idea of letting agencies retain some of the IT savings they achieve in order to reinvest it in more IT. I also understand that the Governmental Affairs Committee recently put up a web site to discuss potential e-government policies and legislation. And, I was glad to learn that the share-in-savings approach to IT is one of its topics. So, I hope the Governmental Affairs committee will take a thorough look at the ideas in my bill. I look forward to working with them to find new ways to save the taxpayer money while improving the services they are provided. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of my bill and a letter from Ms. McGinnis in support of the amendment I'd planned be included in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today I'm introducing a bill designed to lower the cost of the government's information technology systems and improve how those systems serve our citizens by encouraging greater use of a ``share-in-savings'' approach to contracting for information technology (IT). Under a share-in-savings approach, the government contracts with a company to provide an improved, lower cost IT service and the company pays the up-front costs of the project, which is not the usual practice. In return, the contractor gets paid a portion of the money saved by the government under the new arrangement. Essentially, the contractor bears the capital costs needed for the government to save some money and has a strong incentive to decrease the government's costs because they get paid a portion of any savings. Although this approach to IT contracting is authorized as a pilot program under the Clinger-Cohen Act, I understand the executive branch has not made much use of this approach to date. Hence, I believe there are opportunities for greater creativity in this area if we give the agencies greater incentives. Basically, my bill does three things. First, and most importantly, it gives agencies an incentive to try a share-in-savings approach by letting them keep up to half the government's net savings to use for additional IT projects, rather than having all the net savings going back to the Treasury. It's just human nature that if you ask someone to do something risky--like a new IT system--but all the benefits go elsewhere, they're not going to be very inclined to do it. That is, unless they get to keep some of the benefits to improve their own operations--which is what this bill let's them do. The point here is that the more agency managers actually are willing to use this approach, the more money the taxpayer will save in the long run. There's precedent for this with regard to certain Energy Savings Performance Contracts. Under a provision applicable to the Department of Defense, local base commanders can keep a portion of the savings from those contracts to purchase more energy saving equipment or even for morale and recreation purposes. Second, my bill gives the executive branch as a whole an incentive to try share-in-savings contracting for IT by allowing the pilot program to graduate to a regular authority once a significant number of projects have been done, the approach has been found to be useful, and guidance on how to use the authority has been issued. This gives the top levels of the executive branch a goal to push toward. Finally, my bill will ease implementation of share-in-savings contracting by allowing agency program managers to approve the projects, thereby giving them greater autonomy and streamlining the selection process. Currently, share-in-savings IT projects must be approved by the Administrator of Federal Procurement, a very high level in the executive branch. In sum, my bill will encourage greater use of the share-in-savings approach to IT contracting under the Clinger-Cohen Act by giving the agencies a portion of the savings to reinvest; the executive branch a goal; and the program managers more autonomy. I had originally planned to introduce this as an amendment to the Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill. But, because it doesn't look like we'll have a chance to really debate that bill this year, I've decided to introduce this bill today to get my proposal before the Senate. Now, to give some credit where credit is due, I got interested in this topic because of a piece I saw in Roll Call on E-Government by Patricia McGinnis of the Council for Excellence in Government. In it she mentioned the idea of letting agencies retain some of the IT savings they achieve in order to reinvest it in more IT. I also understand that the Governmental Affairs Committee recently put up a web site to discuss potential e-government policies and legislation. And, I was glad to learn that the share-in-savings approach to IT is one of its topics. So, I hope the Governmental Affairs committee will take a thorough look at the ideas in my bill. I look forward to working with them to find new ways to save the taxpayer money while improving the services they are provided. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of my bill and a letter from Ms. McGinnis in support of the amendment I'd planned be included in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. It also requires that the Department report extensively to Congress on how the program is going. None of these requirements exist in current law. The royalty-in-kind provision in the Interior appropriations bill does not have these protections. This very bill we are getting ready to vote on in the next few days, the Interior appropriations bill, does grant authority to the Department to take the Federal Government's royalty in kind, but it does not have the protections that are in the amendment the Senator from Alaska and I are cosponsoring. While 1 year is better than nothing, which is the Interior appropriations language--the Department clearly supports that provision in the Interior appropriations bill--a 5-year authorization gives the agency enough time to actually enter into contracts it would need to seriously test the workability of this program. I wanted to clarify my own views at least as to what this provision would do. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act is important legislation. I hope we can resolve this dispute and get the legislation up for consideration in this Congress. I do support the royalty-in-kind provision the Senator from Alaska and I have cosponsored. It will be beneficial to the Government--not to the oil industry but to the Government. It would be a win/win situation, and I do not see it as in any way breaking faith with the American taxpayer. It would be good public policy for us to go ahead with this. I hope we can do so before the Congress adjourns. I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 2 minutes from the leader's time.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to briefly describe my own thoughts on this royalty-in-kind issue. First, let me say, the Senator from California, and, before her, the Senator from Alaska, talked about a great many issues related to our energy situation. I do not have the time and I have not come to the floor prepared to address all of those. I generally agree with the Senator from California that we need a balanced energy policy. We need to not only do things to increase supply, but we also need to reduce demand in this country. We have fallen short in that regard. I have proposed legislation, which the administration strongly supports, much of which the Senator from California referred to, that I believe would help us to reduce demand and also help us to increase production. I am sorry that we have not been able, as a Congress, and as a Senate, to bring that up for consideration this year. I hope we still can before we adjourn, but the days are growing short. Let me speak for a minute about the particular bill and the royalty- in-kind issue. As I understand it, the action which started this discussion was an effort to move to H.R. 2884. This is the House version of EPCA. EPCA stands for Energy Policy and Conservation Act. That is an important piece of legislation. It reauthorizes the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It sets up a heating oil reserve in the Northeast, about which many feel very strongly. It does a variety of things. It gives the Department of Energy authority to pay above-market prices for production from stripper wells in order to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when the price of oil falls below $15 a barrel. It does other things on the weatherization grant program. It has some useful provisions and contains a variety of other things. It also contains a provision that the Senator from Alaska has strongly supported, and is intent upon keeping in the bill, on the subject of royalty in kind. Let me explain my thoughts on that. The Congress--for several Congresses now--has spent a lot of time arguing about, How do you determine what the royalty ought to be when the Federal Government allows for production of oil and gas on Federal lands? What amount of money is owed to the Federal Government? We all know it is 12.5 percent; it is one-eighth. But how much is that in dollars? There is a lot of litigation on that subject. There has been, for a substantial period of time, a lot of debate on the subject. The Federal agencies which manage our Federal oil and gas resources indicate that in certain circumstances they believe the United States has the opportunity to realize more money by actually taking its one- eighth in royalty in kind; that is, actually taking that royalty in the form of oil or gas instead of receiving it in cash. The thought is that there is more of a benefit to the Government in some circumstances. Existing law authorized the Department of Interior to do that very thing. But under this authority, the Mineral Management Service, MMS, which is part of the Department of Interior, has conducted several very promising pilot programs on this subject of royalty in kind. Two of the latest of these involve Federal onshore oil, conducted in cooperation with the State of Wyoming and offshore gas in the Gulf of Mexico. Those are two examples. Early indications from both of these are that these pilot programs will result in greater revenue for the United States and for the taxpayer than would have been received had the oil and gas been taken in value, had the Government been paid dollars instead. As an example, the thought of the Senator from California, as I understood it, was that there is something unfair to the Government by having the Government take its oil or its gas in kind. An analogy which we might think about is if the Government were owed one beer out of a six- pack, would it make more sense for the Government to take that beer or would it be better for the Government to go through a lengthy process of trying to establish the value of that one beer once it considered the cost of transporting the six-pack and the cost of storing it and all the other things. And in some circumstances, as I understand it, the Department of Interior, through this Minerals Management Service, has determined that it is in their interest to go ahead and take the royalty in kind instead of trying to calculate and argue about the price of it. Based on these programs that have been in place, MMS, the Minerals Management Service, has determined that it could conduct a more efficient program, one that would be more likely to result in increased revenues, if it were able to pay for contracts for transporting and processing and selling the oil and gas it takes from Federal leases. Existing authorities allow the MMS to enter into contracts for these services but do not provide a way for them to pay except under general agency appropriations. The amendment the Senator from Alaska has offered and I have cosponsored grants to the Department of Interior authority to use the money it makes when it sells oil and gas it takes in kind to pay for the expenses incurred in preparing it for sale, including its transportation, processing, aggregating, storing, and marketing. There is a 5-year sunset on this. The amendment adds to existing law some very substantial protections for the Government and for the taxpayer. It requires the Department to stop taking royalties in kind if the Secretary of Interior determines that it is not beneficial to the United States to take royalty in that form.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to take 6 minutes of the leader's time to speak as in morning business on the continuing resolution.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 A Question of Balance With OPEC's third ministerial meeting of the year scheduled to begin on 10 September, followed by a Heads of State gathering later in the month, the usual questions are being asked: whether, when and by how much should or will producers increase production? In a complicated market, most analysts expect OPEC to boost production. If OPEC goes with a modest increase, it would simply endorse what has already happened: August crude supply from OPEC (excluding Iraq) exceeded the 1 July target by 435 kb/d. Whatever the outcome, producers will likely take it upon themselves to increase production in excess of formal targets. Continuing high prices and extreme market volatility indicate that the market is fundamentally unbalanced. Stocks are stubbornly low even as economic activity has been strengthening globally. Low stocks are in large measure the result of 18 months of production restraint by producers in an effort to achieve price recovery on the heels of extremely low prices in 1998 and early 1999. At the margin, production restraint works, but it is an imprecise instrument. It can have profound and unforeseen side effects, including market instability and the distortion of economic behaviour. The Labour Day weekend signals the end of the peak summer driving season in the US and Canada. Given earlier historic low gasoline inventories, North American refiners had been running flat out just to meet demand. Even when some additional OPEC crude did become available to the market it was for the most part sour and of a heavy grade, something the market could not fully digest in large quantities. Consequently, sweet-sour differentials widened and there was a build of sour crude stocks at the same time refiners were clamouring for more oil. OPEC Crude Production [Million barrels per day] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 July August Sustainable 2000 2000 Production production Spare targets production v targets capacity capacity ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Algeria................................................ 0.81 0.83 0.02 0.90 0.07 Indonesia.............................................. 1.32 1.31 -0.01 1.35 0.05 Iran................................................... 3.73 3.67 -0.06 3.73 0.06 Kuwait................................................. 2.04 2.14 0.10 2.40 0.26 Libya.................................................. 1.36 1.43 0.07 1.45 0.02 Nigeria................................................ 2.09 2.01 -0.09 2.20 0.20 Qatar.................................................. 0.66 0.70 0.04 0.75 0.05 Saudi Arabia........................................... 8.25 8.55 0.30 10.50 1.95 UAE.................................................... 2.22 2.28 0.07 2.40 0.12 Venezuela.............................................. 2.93 2.92 -0.01 2.95 0.03 Subtotal............................................... 25.40 25.84 0.44 28.63 2.79 Iraq................................................... ........ 2.95 .......... 3.00 0.05 Total................................................ ........ 28.79 .......... 31.63 2.84 Memo Item: Mexico crude................................ ........ \1\ 3.10 .......... 3.40 0.30 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Estimated. Even as aggregate stocks rise, albeit from low levels, severe imbalances remain in product markets. By maximising gasoline yields, refiners unavoidably have contributed to a secondary problem. Distillate stocks in the Atlantic Basin are extremely low heading into the peak winter heating season. The market is too fragile. It needs higher inventories to protect against circumstances such as an abnormally cold winter. Without adequate stock coverage, the market lumbers from one problem to another, creating instability in its wake, dragging prices ever higher. Fortunately, surplus crude oil production and refining capacity is available around the world which, if mobilised quickly, can begin to address these market imbalances. Incremental feedstock is rich in distillates, something that is in high demand for heating-mode operations. But stocks need to build well in advance of peak seasonal demand. Producers need to look beyond the present to see their way through to market stability. Exhibit 2 A Drop in the Barrel? The decision to release part of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been widely criticized. Even many commentators with no ax to grind seem convinced that there is something irresponsible about the move. But they're wrong. We should be tapping our oil reserves; in fact, the big mistake was not using them months ago. Put it this way: Why has the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, derided as irrelevant only two years ago, suddenly become so effective again? The answer is that now, as in the oil crises of 1973-4 and 1979-80, circumstances have given OPEC what amounts to a temporary corner on the world oil market. Our long-run policy should be to encourage production and discourage consumption, so this doesn't happen again. But in the meantime we should try to prevent OPEC from taking full advantage of that corner. Releasing oil reserves to set a cap on prices--and making it clear that we are prepared to release more--will do exactly that. Successful attempts to corner markets are rare, but they happen. A Jappense company managed to corner the entire world copper market in the mid-1990's (through it lost it all by overplaying its hand). The standard procedure is to surreptitiously buy up a large part of the supply of your chosen commodity, then pull some of that supply off the market, causing prices to soar for the rest. In effect, the market manipulator creates a temporary monopoly position for himself--the market corner--and exploits that temporary monopoly by selling some but not all of his stockpile at very high prices. OPEC did not follow the classic procedure, but events have produced much the same result. Very low oil prices a few years ago discouraged independent producers; oil exploration fell off sharply. Then demand for oil surged as Asia recovered from its financial crisis and Americans bought ever more S.U.V.'s The result is that for the time being, even with non-OPEC production at maximum, a few major exporting nations know that they have enormous market power. By producing a few hundred thousand barrels a day less than they could, they can drive prices on the oil they do produce to levels not seen in many years. This situation won't last indefinitely. As long as we don't do something foolish like encourage consumption by cutting taxes on gasoline, new supplies of oil, together with falling demand in response to high prices, will eventually eliminate that market power. Until then the oil exporters have us, yes, over a barrel, and are exploiting their temporary advantage with gusto. But if withholding a few hundred thousands barrels a day from the market can drive prices sky-high, putting a similar amount back in can bring them back down to earth--as demonstrated by the sharp drop in oil prices that followed the announcement of plans to tap U.S. strategic reserves. And Western governments have more than a billion barrels in reserve. Why not use those reserves to break the market corner, or at least to limit its effectiveness? Some warn that if we supply more oil, OPEC will supply less. Indeed, yesterday Libya's oil minister made that threat explicit. But the logic of the situation suggests that this threat isn't credible. Oil producers know that they are getting higher prices for their oil now than they will in a year or two; the only reason they are not putting as much as they can is that they believe that holding back will keep prices high. But if they know that attempts to drive up prices by restricting production will be offset by increased release from Western reserves, they will have less, not more, reason to keep oil off the market. A credible promise (threat?) to use our petroleum reserves to prevent prices from going too high might well actually persuade OPEC to produce more than it otherwise would. Remember that we're not talking about fundamental market forces here. This market is already being manipulated by a handful of exporting-nation governments--so why shouldn't the importing-nation governments also enter the game? We have a lot of influence over this market, if we choose to use it. And it would be not just a shame, but positively shameful, if we allow ourselves to be deterred from acting in our own interest because we're afraid to annoy the oil cartel. Exhibit 3 (From the Economist October 12, 1996, U.S. Edition) A case of unrefined behaviour From Texas to Thailand, oil refining is a consistently miserable business. It will stay that way as long as pride is more important than profits. This week three oil companies--Shell Oil, the American arm of Royal Dutch/Shell; Texaco, an American firm; and Star Enterprise, a joint venture between Texaco and Saudi Aramco, the state-run Saudi Arabian giant--announced they were discussing a possible merger of their American refining and marketing operations. That would mean pooling $10 billion- worth of assets and creating America's biggest oil retailer, with a market share of 15 percent. Earlier this year, British Petroleum, BP, and America's Mobil, two other oil giants, announced a $5 billion deal to merge their downstream businesses in Europe. Both mergers are the sign of an industry in trouble. Until a decade or so ago, the oil business barely treated refining as an industry in its own right; it was simply the necessary process by which crude oil was adapted for an ever-growing market once the hard, glamorous job of wrenching the stuff out of the ground had been completed. Now that oil firms treat their downstream businesses as profit centres, they have discovered that they are often nothing of the sort. The world's biggest oil firms have recently been making a much higher return from their upstream investments than from their downstream (one chart on next page). In most parts of the world there are simply too many refineries. In Europe and the United States, too few firms are willing to shut them down; and in Asia, they seem to be building many more than they need. Demand for oil in North America and Western Europe is sluggish. According to the International Energy Agency, it was only 1 percent higher in 1995 than in 1993. Yet both regions are plagued with over-capacity. In 1990-95 the capacity of American refiners to produce light-oil products, such as gasoline, increased by an average of 1m barrels per day--almost double the rate of growth in demand. Over the same period, the refining margin, ie, the value of a basket of typical refined products less the cost of crude, fell by 51 percent in real terms, to $2.53 per barrel, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, CERA, a consultancy based in Massachusetts. Two other factors complicate the picture. The first is the cost of having to refit plants to comply with environmental rules. American refiners reckon that they will need to spend $150 billion over the next 15 years to meet green regulations. (Closing a refinery does not let a firm off the hook: there are extremely onerous environmental regulations about cleaning up old industrial sites.) The other problem is that oil marketing--the other main activity of the downstream business--has become ferociously competitive in some countries. In Britain supermarkets have snatched a quarter of the retail petrol market, much of that from the big oil firms; in France hypermarkets now sell around half of the country's petrol. European oil firms are beginning to follow the example of their American counterparts by adding convenience stores to their pumps: the typical American petrol station now makes some 40 percent of its profits from the sale of non-oil products, such as cigarettes and beer. Certainly the new downstream mergers should help firms cut some costs. BP and Mobil reckon that they will save around $450m a year; savings from the proposed new American merger will be four times that, according to one estimate. Much of these savings will come from merging and slimming head-office and other administrative functions. The worry is that this is too little, too late. The proposed American merger, as it is currently being discussed, apparently will not involve closing any refineries. And the BP-Mobil joint venture has so far led to no new closure previously announced by the two companies. After you. No, after you. One problem is that it is in nobody's interest to move first to shut down capacity. While the costs of closing a refinery are paid by its owner, the benefits--in terms of higher refining margins--accrue to the industry as a whole. Hence every firm wants refineries to be closed, as long as they are not its own. Meanwhile, according to a new report by Enerfinance, a consultancy in Paris, there are still 600,000 barrels per day of excess refining capacity in Western Europe (although some oil companies reckon the surplus is double that). Frustrated in Europe and America, many western refiners have been looking to Asia, where car ownership and electricity consumption are growing fast. Demand for oil products in the region is expected to rise by over 4 percent a year between 1995 and 2010, according to Chem Systems, a London consultancy. On some estimates, $140 billion of new investment in refining will be required to meet this demand. Yet, strangely, the refining business is proving dismal in Asia too. Refining margins have drifted lower since the start of the 1990s. In September, for example, the average Singapore refining margin--a benchmark--had sunk to $2.98 per barrel, compared with a 1992-93 average of over $5 per barrel, according to CERA. One big oil company reckons many refineries in the region are now barely covering their running costs, let alone their huge capital investment (a typical new refinery costs around $1.5 billion). The problem is that over the past year refinery capacity in Asia has grown even faster than demand for oil products. Consumption in the region has been hit both by a recession in Japan, and by an attempt by the Chinese government to restrict imports of oil products into the country. But the excess capacity is also due to a swathe of new refineries that are being built. In Thailand two new refineries have recently come on stream. Both are joint ventures with PTT, the state-run oil company--one involving Royal Dutch/-Shell, the other involving Caltex, which is jointly owned by Texaco and Chevron, two giant American oil firms. Many South Koreans meanwhile are expanding the capacity of their existing plants. According to Petroleum Argus, an industry newsletter, new investment in South Korea, Thailand and India alone is expected to boost Asia's capacity this year by around 6 percent, to 17.5m barrels per day (last year, demand across the Asia-Pacific region as a whole rose by 4.5 percent). Many refiners say that this is a short-term problem. They argue that low margins will now deter new investment, that demand will eventually outpace capacity, and that margins will thus widen again. Many other capital-intensive industries suffer from a similar boom-bust cycle. Maybe. But many of those companies building refineries are doing so for reasons other than a calculation that they will make money. Politics often interferes. Middle East countries, for instance, are keen to ensure a secure outlet for their crude oil for decades to come. For this reason, their firms sometimes seem willing to tolerate lower returns than western oil Saudi Aramco has bought a stake both in Petron, a Philippine oil-refining and marketing firm, and in Ssang-yong Oil, a South Korean refiner. The state oil companies of Kuwait, Oman and Abu Dhabi are now talking about building new refineries in a number of Asian countries, including Pakistan, Thailand and India. Asian governments and oil firms also have their own reasons for increasing domestic refining capacity. The governments see it as a way to reduce their dependence on imported oil products. Pakistan has recently tried to tempt investors to build new refineries by offering them a guaranteed 25 percent annual rate of return. The companies see building refineries as a way to turn themselves into more international businesses. The big South Korean refiners have expanded their capacity partly in the hope of exporting greater volumes to China. With so many people eager to build more refineries in Asia, there may be no significant improvement in refining margins over the next few years, predicts Dennis Eklof of CERA. In Asia everyone is rushing to build at once; in Europe and America nobody wants to shut a refinery. Either way, the collective ambition of individual refiners thwarts the interests of the industry as a whole; and either way, oil refiners behave remarkably like lemmings. Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, robust demand growth has finally caught up to eliminate that excess capacity, both in the United States and in Europe. Clearly, domestic refining capacity is a significant concern that needs to be addressed, but if near-term crude prices come down enough--as they have started to since the announcement to swap oil from the reserve--the underutilized refining capacity in Asia and the Caribbean could be utilized to increase the distillate stocks in the world market. There are many political and economic factors beyond the control of the Congress and the administration that drive OPEC decisions. To a substantial extent, the price of oil will be driven by world market factors beyond our control. Natural gas, on the other hand, is largely sold in the North American market. While there is no quick or easy fix, we need to assess the impacts of our current policies on natural gas and on oil development during very low world oil price periods to avoid these boom-and-bust cycles in the future. No one wants to go back to the days of regulation with gasoline lines and natural gas shortages, but we do need to determine where there are market inefficiencies and market failures that cause this extreme volatility in product stocks and prices. One of the major problems in the crude oil market is uncertainty about actual global consumption and production until months after the fact. Our Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, has already begun the process of improving market data with the successful meeting this summer involving both the consuming countries and OPEC representatives. We also need a better assessment of whether and how increased demand for oil products and natural gas will be met, and this includes better coordination of environmental and fuel policies. Over the long run, the least costly, most environmentally benign, and sustainable thing we can do is to use energy more efficiently. I refer to this chart to make that point. When one looks at the petroleum consumption in this country by sector, it is very easy to conclude what our problem is. Our problem is consumption in the transportation sector. That is this top line, which is going off the chart. What does that mean? It means the cars especially the sport utility vehicles, we are driving now are much less fuel efficient than they could and should be. That makes no sense. We now have much better technology than we used to have. We know how to produce a car with good power without it consuming such enormous quantities of gasoline, and in fact there are some of those on the market. Because of lack of attention, because of lack of commitment, because of lack of purpose, we in the Congress in particular, but also the administration, have given too little attention to this transportation issue. We are going to have to get serious about energy efficiency in this country if we are going to ever reduce the demand and see to it that we do not become further dependent upon foreign sources of petroleum products. That is not popular, I understand. We had a vote last year on whether or not to even allow the study of whether sports utility vehicles could be considered to be cars and come under corporate fuel efficiency standards. The truth is, that effort last year failed. Most Senators chose to look the other way and to say this was not something that was a priority. Now we see the result. I found it a little more than ironic that once gasoline prices began to rise this summer, our major auto manufacturers realized they could increase fuel economy of sport utility vehicles and light trucks by as much as 25 percent without costing jobs or eliminating the features that consumers want in those vehicles. In fact, one of the companies' CEO made an announcement that they were going to go ahead and do that on their own, even though nobody required it of them. We need to make sure those efficiency improvements show up in the marketplace as quickly as possible, and we need to educate Americans on the importance of taking advantage of those efficiency improvements. There was reference yesterday to a New York Times article suggesting that Japan appears unaffected by the current high price of crude oil. I point out that according to the Energy Information Administration, Japan has among the highest gasoline prices in the OECD, second only to Norway. Approximately half the price of gasoline in Japan is made up of taxes, about 48 percent. American consumers are not as inured to such high prices as the Japanese. The Japanese, however, have done a much better job of increasing overall fuel economy than we have in our country. Many of the provisions in this amendment which I would offer if we were going to seriously consider passing legislation on energy security--and as I said at the beginning of my statement, there is no serious intention on the part of the majority leader to have us consider energy security before this Congress adjourns--but if we were to consider energy security and I were permitted to offer my amendment to S. 2557, it would address a broad range of technologies and industries that are necessary to meet our energy needs. The amendment would include a serious commitment to more efficient use of energy in its many forms, as well as incentives to ensure we can maintain production of our domestic resources. It would address several issues. I will list six of them. First, it would address the purchase of more efficient appliances, homes, and commercial buildings; Second, address greater use of distributed generation; that is, fuel cells, microturbines, combined heat and power systems and renewables; Third, the purchase of hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles and development of the infrastructure to service those vehicles; Fourth, the investment in clean coal technologies and generation of electricity from biomass, including co-firing with coal. Fifth, countercyclical tax incentives for production from domestic oil and gas marginal wells. Those are extremely important in my State. Finally, sixth, provisions to ensure diverse sources of electric power supply are developed in the United States and to continue our investment in demand-side management. I notice the assistant Democratic leader is on the floor and anxious to proceed with other business. I conclude by saying I believe this is an important issue. I hope very much that the majority leader and the Republican majority in the Congress will work with us to pass a bipartisan energy package before we conclude this session. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the full text of the amendment that I would offer be printed in the Record immediately following my statement.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, the thrust of that article is that the decision to go ahead with release of oil from the SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, was the right decision. He says we should be tapping our oil reserves. In fact, our mistake was that we waited too long; we should have been doing it months ago. But he applauds the decision of the President last week to go ahead now. I commend that article to my colleagues. Beyond crude oil availability, the other key and a more complicated element is U.S. refining capacity, which currently is at near maximum utilization. While it is true that the number of refineries has decreased during the past 10 years, the capacity has actually increased. In 1990, there were 205 refineries. By 1998, that number had decreased to 163. However, the total capacity increased from 15.57 million barrels per day to 15.71 million barrels per day over that same period. Certain small, inefficient refineries which were originally built to take advantage of the old oil allocation rules were shut down rather than upgraded to produce cleaner fuels, but the refineries that did upgrade to comply with the Clean Air Act actually expanded capacity--more specifically, the capacity to produce light products. According to the Economist magazine, there was considerable excess capacity in the U.S. refining sector as recently as late 1996. I quote from an article in the Economist: Demand for oil in North America and Western Europe is sluggish. According to the International Energy Agency, it was only 1 percent higher in 1995 than 1993. Yet both regions are plagued with over-capacity. In 1990-1995, the capacity of American refiners to produce light-oil products, such as gasoline, increased by an average of 1 million barrels per day--almost double the rate of growth in demand. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of that article entitled ``A case of Unrefined Behaviour'' from the October 12, 1996, Economist be printed in the Record following my statement.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent I be allowed to proceed for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.