Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, the amendment that is to be voted on next is one I offered which takes the $275 million per year that is the estimated cost of this underlying bill with the tax provisions and it devotes that $275 million to assisting States to hold local school districts accountable to upgrade standards. It is an accountability amendment. Presently, most of the States in the country have established performance standards for their schools and their students but we have no accountability provisions that are adequate for them to meet those standards. This amendment tries to solve that. It gives the resources to the States so they can solve that. I believe it is a very good amendment and it is something we all ought to support. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Ms. Mary Anaya of Roswell, New Mexico, who recently retired from the City Council after 18 years of service. As a long time resident, city councilor and community leader, Ms. Anaya has worked to better the Roswell community while holding true to her convictions with courage and grace. Though her tenacity alone is commendable, there is much more that deserves recognition. Ms. Anaya, who represented Ward 5, is an example of a true representative, always putting her constituents' needs first. During the time she served on the council, the people of Ward 5 could depend on her thoughtful and considerate insight, knowing that their interests were being diligently represented. Roswell's Ward 5 is comprised of many of the city's low-income residents. Ms. Anaya was a champion of issues her constituents faced on a daily basis. She was an advocate of quality of life issues, such as health care, housing and community development. She worked tirelessly to improve primary health care, and as a result of her hard work, a primary health care facility, La Casa de Buena Salud, was built in Roswell. Ms. Anaya was instrumental to the project's success. Furthermore, she spearheaded projects to rehabilitate housing for the elderly and low-income residents in Ward 5. Everyone deserves decent housing, and many of the citizens of Ward 5 benefitted from Ms. Anaya's work for this right. The creation of recreational areas was an issue that she dedicated much of her time to, making places for the community's children to play. She also worked to improve the city's infrastructure, making the streets safer for the entire Roswell community. Ms. Anaya always worked on behalf of the citizens of Roswell, and it is clear that because of her dedication, many people live a better life. As a council member, Ms. Anaya was an advocate for Hispanic causes. When an English-only speaking rule in the school system threatened the educational opportunities of the students, Ms. Anaya rose to overturn the rule. She also fought to increase the hiring of Hispanics by the City of Roswell, and her efforts were rewarded when the City hired their first Hispanic employee. As the Roswell Daily Record states: ``Many people believe that over 50 years she and her husband, Pete, have helped advance Hispanic causes in Roswell more than anyone else in the city and have done it in a positive, productive way. We agree.'' Mary Anaya deserves special recognition for her steadfast work on behalf of the citizens of Roswell. She performed her civic duties with pride and joy, always working with a smile. On the council, she was an asset to Roswell, and as a citizen, she is an asset to us all. Her work will be appreciated for generations to come.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join today with my good friend and colleague from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, to introduce this bill along with Senator Baucus. This bill assures that our Native American communities have the funding they need for critical transportation projects. Our bill will fund the Indian Reservation Road Program for the next three years with at least $275 million per year, the full amount authorized by Congress. Mr. President, since I came to the Senate in 1983, I've worked hard to promote economic development and create new jobs for my state of New Mexico. One thing I learned very quickly is that you can't expect to attract new industry unless you have the basic infrastructure to support residential and commercial needs. The most important infrastructure needs include transportation, power, communications, water and sewers. Without these basic services at affordable rates, opportunities to create good jobs will simply not develop. Today our country is fortunate to have one of the strongest economies in history. Our recent advances in job creation and economic growth are accomplishments that all Americans should be proud of. Unfortunately, as many of us know, some sectors of our nation continue to lag behind the wave of economic prosperity that has swept the nation. In particular, I remain concerned about our Native American communities. Unemployment rates today in Indian Country frequently top 30, 40, and even 50 percent. Mr. President, the nation must not stand by while Indian Country is literally being left behind. Perhaps more than any other community in America, the Tribes and Alaska Native Villages suffer from inadequate infrastructure. This year I am pleased to be working with President Clinton, Senators Daschle, Domenici, and others on a number of new programs and initiatives to help the Native American Communities enjoy the same level of economic prosperity as the rest of America. In this respect, the Tribes are no different than the rest of America--to promote their economic development basic infrastructure must first be in place. The President's initiative recognizes this fact. The bill we are introducing today addresses one element of that initiative--the need for basic transportation, including roads and transit. This bill will help promote transportation on every reservation in America by fully funding the Indian Reservation Roads Program. First established in 1928, the Indian Reservation Roads program is one of the ways America meets its special responsibility to help Native Americans achieve self sufficiency and self determination. The goal of the Indian Reservation Roads program is to provide safe and economic means of transportation throughout Indian Country. Over the years, the program has been reauthorized and modified to help meet the Tribes' needs for basic transportation infrastructure. Most recently, the program was reauthorized for six years in 1998. The program is playing a critical role in economic development, self-determination, and employment of Native Americans in 33 states, including the Alaska Native Villages. Currently, the reservation roads system comprises 25,700 miles of BIA- and Tribal-owned roads and 25,600 miles of state, county and local roads. There are also 740 bridges on the system and even one ferry boat in the state of Washington. These public roads and transit system are, of course, used by everyone, not just Native Americans. To give the Senate some perspective of the magnitude of this system, the 51,000 total miles on the Indian Reservation Road system are more miles of public roads than there are in 15 states. If you consider only roads on the Federal Aid Highway system, the Indian road system has more miles than the state of California. Unfortunately, Mr. President, many of the roads on the IRR system are among the worst in the nation. Of the 25,700 miles owned by BIA and Tribes, two thirds or 18,000 miles are not paved and 12,000 are unimproved dirt roads. Currently, 190 of the 740 bridges are listed as deficient, presenting serious safety concerns. The estimated backlog in road and bridge construction alone is $4 billion, and that doesn't even start to include transit needs. When roads are as bad as these, people can't get to work, children in school buses can't get to school, and seniors can't get to their doctors or hospitals. Mr. President, in 1998, under the able guidance of the late Senator Chafee and Senator Baucus, Congress produced the Transportation Equity Act for the Twenty-First Century, or TEA-21. Through its many transportation programs, TEA-21 has already had major impacts on transportation, both highways and transit, in my state and around the country. The bill increased funding for state highway programs by an average of fifty percent above the levels in the previous six-year bill, ISTEA. Some states, because of population growth, are seeing increases of seventy, eighty and even ninety percent over the levels in ISTEA. Unfortunately, funding for the Indian Reservation Roads Program did not receive the same magnitude of increase as TEA-21 provided for the states. The full impact of TEA-21 on the Indian Road program has only recently become clear. In the last year of ISTEA, the program was funded at nearly $220 million. Now, under TEA-21, the authorization level was increased to $275 million, but for the first time, the program was subject to an obligation limitation, which reduces the funding this year by $35 million. Thus, despite the massive infusion of transportation funding to the states, funding for Indian Country was inexplicably left behind. While the states averaged a fifty percent increase in annual highway funding, the tribes got less than half that--only about a twenty percent increase. Mr. President, though TEA-21 strived for equity in funding, we fell short of equity when it came to Native Americans. Our bill is very simple. It provides a very narrow exemption to the obligation limitation in TEA-21 to assure that the full authorized amount, $275 million, is available to help meet critical transportation needs in Indian Country. The exemption would only apply to the remaining three years of TEA-21. A number of other programs in TEA-21 already have this exemption, and I believe that Congress should make good on its commitment to the tribes to provide the Indian Road Program the full amount authorized. This increase in funding would bring the program roughly up to parity with the increase that the state highway programs are already receiving in TEA-21. Mr. President, I fully appreciate that a few Senators may have concerns about changing any aspect of the funding distribution in TEA- 21. However, I believe a strong argument can be made in this unique case. First, nobody can dispute the incredible needs for transportation infrastructure in Indian Country, which suffers, as I said, a backlog of at least $4 billion. Second, the effect of our bill on all other highway programs in TEA-21, including state highway funding, is truly minimal; its impact amounts to only about one-tenth of one percent. Third, this is an issue of basic fairness. This change would provide both the states and the IRR roughly the same 50 percent increase in their transportation funding above the levels in ISTEA. And finally, I believe we made a commitment to the tribes when we authorized funding of $275 million. Congress should make good on that commitment. In closing, I look forward to working with the distinguished Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Smith, and the Ranking Member, Senator Baucus, as well as with the Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, Senator Voinovich, to correct this serious inequity in what is otherwise an outstanding transportation bill. Mr. President, state highway departments recognize how important this program is to both the tribes and the states. I recently received a letter from Mr. Pete K. Rahn, Secretary of the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Department. In his letter, Secretary Rahn indicates his support for this bill. He goes on to say that the department recognizes that the bill will result in a slight reduction in the federal funds, which flow directly to the state of New Mexico. However, he continues, the department also recognizes that the benefit realized by the state as a whole, by the substantial increase in funds to the state's tribes for road improvements, far outweigh this reduction. I want to thank Secretary Rahn for expressing his support for this bill. I have a similar letter addressed to Senator Baucus from Connie Niva, Chair of the State of Washington Transportation Commission, along with a resolution in support of lifting the obligation limitation from the Indian Reservation Road Program. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from Secretary Rahn, the letter and a resolution from the Washington Transportation Commission, letters from Mr. Kelsey A. Begaye, President of the Navajo Nation, and Mr. David McKinney, Executive Director of the Intertribal Transportation Association, and a resolution from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians be included in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me take the remaining time to commend our chairman, Senator Murkowski, for his heroic efforts in trying to come up with legislation that would be constructive and deal with this problem. This is not an easy issue to resolve. There are many points of view. First, the subject is complex. The history of the legislation is certainly varied and difficult. I certainly believe the chairman has worked in good faith to try to come up with a solution. As I stated several times this morning, I do not believe he has been successful in that regard. I am not able to support the bill. I think there is a lot of confusion that has surrounded our debate here on the floor. As to the whole notion that the Governors are fearful that waste would wind up remaining in their States if they did not drop this take title provision, I can say if they are worried that waste will remain, they have good grounds to be worried because it is going to remain in their States. Under current law, and under this legislation, if this legislation becomes law, the waste will remain in their States. The only question is, who is going to have ownership and responsibility for that waste. We had proposed that the Department of Energy be given ownership and responsibility. We believe that would, if anything, desensitize the Department to move ahead more quickly on Yucca Mountain. I believe that is clearly the case. The notion that anybody who opposes this bill is going to have to explain why they want waste to remain in their States is not the issue on which we are voting. Waste is going to remain in each of the States where it is now located unless and until we get the Yucca Mountain site characterized. I hope we do that quickly. I am doing all I can to support doing that quickly. I believe the waste should be moved to a permanent repository. I think that is clearly where we need to head. But the notion that this problem is going to be somehow solved by passing this bill is just not supported by anything. There is no logic to that. We can pass this bill. This bill can be signed by the President. You can wind up 5 years from now trying to explain to people in your State why the waste is still sitting there because it is going to be there in 5 years regardless. I think people need to understand that there is much less here than meets the eye. As far as this legislation is concerned, anyone who thinks this legislation is going to put any problem behind them is going to be sorely disappointed down the road. In fact, I think the problems will be compounded if we enact this legislation and it were to become law. I urge colleagues to oppose the bill and I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield 1 minute to the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity before we vote to recognize a member of the Senate staff who has contributed a lot to the nuclear waste debate over the years. That person is Joe Barry, who has worked for Senator Bryan for many years, and who apparently has actually had other duties not related to nuclear waste, as well. He is a tremendous professional who has helped keep the debate in the Senate on this issue on a high level of technical accuracy. I understand that he will be leaving for a position in the private sector in Boston when we break for this recess. Senators don't always agree with each other in debate. The search for relevant and accurate information and perspectives is essential to the legislative process, and is greatly helped when Members have highly competent professional staff like Joe. We will miss him in this chamber, and I would like to extend my personal best wishes to him for great success in the future.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me respond to a few of the points made in debate. The other Senator from Nevada also wishes to speak. First, when my good friend from Wyoming made his comments, he made a point that we hear a lot on the floor, which is that the people who are opposed to this bill have offered no alternatives. That is not true. I think anyone who has followed the course of this legislation in committee knows that I offered an alternative in committee, which got a significant number of votes, which I believe would have been a substantial step forward. On each of the issues we are debating, I have offered alternative language. So, clearly, that is not the case. Second, on the issue about the Department of Energy making no progress with the Yucca Mountain project, I don't think that is an accurate or fair criticism at this point. Clearly, they have not done all we wish had been done, but it is also true that Congress, most years, has not provided the funding requested for this project. The Department of Energy is on target to characterize the Yucca Mountain facility. Five miles of tunnel have been built in the last few years. Numerous test facilities have been built. Progress is being made but not adequate progress. I am sure they are unhappy with the pace of progress. Of course, this legislation contains a delay in the EPA's ability to issue their standards. The take title is perhaps the part that is most confusing because there seems to be an underlying belief on the part of some Senators who have spoken that if we provide this take title authority so that the Department of Energy can go in and take the title and settle these lawsuits that are pending, somehow or other that lessens the need for the Department of Energy to go ahead and move the waste to Yucca Mountain or to any other central facility. I don't see that myself. What Federal agency is going to want to permanently be the owner and caretaker of nuclear waste in 80 different locations? Clearly, DOE would not want that result. They would like to resolve the pending lawsuits, take title to the property, move ahead as quickly as possible to get the site characterized, and if it meets the standard, then go ahead with it. So I don't think this take title thing is what it is described to be. On the land transfer issue, on which there has been some discussion, there were no land transfers in the committee-reported bill. I think we need to understand that. So there are no maps and there was no discussion about it in the committee because it wasn't brought up there. Page 11 of the bill makes reference to ``maps dated February 1, 2000, and on file with the Secretary of Energy.'' We can't find any such maps. The Secretary of Energy can't find any such maps. We don't know what they are talking about. There is real confusion about the specifics of these land transfers. The final point I will make on this--and I will defer to my colleague, Senator Reid--is the chairman, understandably, in his concluding remarks, said if you vote for this bill, we will put this problem behind us. Mr. President, if that were true, I would be sorely tempted to vote for this bill. The truth is, we can vote for this bill, pass this bill, and the President can sign this bill, but not only are the problems not behind us, our problems would be compounded. Therefore, I will not be able to support the bill. I regret that we will not pass something that does, in fact, put the problem behind us. I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Nevada, Senator Reid.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I yield 3 minutes to Senator Bryan, the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, we are now in the final hour of discussion about this nuclear waste-related bill. I thought, since I do not see Senator Murkowski, the chairman of our committee, I would go ahead and make my statement indicating my position. I did speak yesterday on the Senate floor on this issue and laid out the reasons I will be voting against S. 1287 this morning. I encourage my colleagues to join me in voting against the bill. I do so for the simple reason that the bill as presently before us does not solve the problems of the nuclear waste program. In fact, it magnifies those problems. Let me go through some of the specifics. First, the bill does not reduce the liability that is borne by taxpayers for the program's failure. Instead of reducing that liability, this bill would increase that liability. The part of the bill that purports to offer the Department of Energy authority to settle lawsuits filed against it is arguably worse for the U.S. taxpayer than is current law. Other parts of the bill set new and arbitrary deadlines for the Department of Energy to ship nuclear waste to Nevada. We know today that the Department of Energy cannot meet those deadlines, and a vote for this bill is a vote for a new wave of litigation. We are already enmeshed in a great deal of litigation. A vote for this bill will bring us even more litigation. Second, this bill does not speed up the decision of the Department of Energy on whether Yucca Mountain is suitable for a repository. In fact, the effect of the bill is to slow down that decision. By delaying the issuance of a radiation standard for Yucca Mountain by EPA, the bill would delay the process of finalizing whether Yucca Mountain will be a repository site. The third point I want to make is that this bill does not make new funds available to the nuclear waste program so we can do an effective job of investigating Yucca Mountain and building a repository. Instead of making those funds available, which we should be doing, to the contrary, this bill caps the amount of funds the Department of Energy can collect and shifts the burden of paying for nuclear waste disposal from the beneficiaries of that nuclear power--that is, the people who received electricity from it--to everyone else in the country. The fourth point I want to make is that the bill does not facilitate the movement of nuclear waste out of our individual States. In fact, this bill, as I read it, would impede the transportation of waste out of those States. Even if we managed to build a repository, if you are from a State that has nuclear waste, the bill contains an impossible hurdle to moving that waste out of your State. Read page 17 of the bill. You will find that no shipments of nuclear waste can occur anywhere until the Secretary of Energy has determined that emergency responders in every locality and every tribal entity along primary or alternative shipping routes for nuclear waste have met acceptable standards of training. Right in that single provision are the seeds of two huge lawsuits that will keep nuclear waste in your State forever: A lawsuit over what constitutes acceptable training and a lawsuit over the reasonableness of the required determination by the Secretary of Energy that every volunteer fire or ambulance company in every locality that might see nuclear waste at some point is adequately trained. Also, the requirements are vastly more restrictive on the Department of Energy than anything we have ever considered in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant case. In my view, such a certification by a Cabinet officer is a practical impossibility, not to mention an unprecedented intrusion by the Federal Government into local government responsibilities. The fifth point is that this bill does not fix the problem of the one utility that is actually threatened by a shutdown of one of its plants because of the failings of the Department of Energy's nuclear waste program. I am speaking about the Northern States Power plant at Prairie Island. Nothing in this bill forestalls the shutdown of that plant which is expected in January of 2007. One of the most disappointing developments of the past few days has been the stripping from the bill of the major provision that did make this bill worth passing, in my view, even though some of the flaws I have described are still in the bill. The provision that was stripped was a provision giving the Department of Energy new authority and capability to resolve lawsuits that have been filed against it. We have been told this is what a group of seven Governors are insisting. They wanted us to drop this provision. I studied a copy of their purported letter on this subject, and I find it a very strange document. The copy I have been given is not dated, it carries no signatures, and it is not on any official letterhead. In fact, it carries a heading that suggests it is a draft document. The letter is not about this bill. It is about testimony Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson gave about a year ago. Some of the reasons given in the draft letter for opposing take title do not apply to this legislation. One argument in the letter complains that nuclear waste might be stored on riverfronts or lakes or seashores where, of course, the reality is one finds nuclear waste stored today in powerplants. Specifically, an alternative to take title recommended in the letter is not contained in the bill on which we are about to vote, so the claim that by gutting this bill of its key provision --that is, its take title provision--we have satisfied seven Governors is certainly not supported by anything I have found in the document. The other curious thing about what we have done to the bill during the course of our deliberations this week when we removed this take title provision is that we have converted its statutory instructions to the Department of Energy for settling industry lawsuits into something we know the States themselves publicly oppose. Without take title, all the Department of Energy can do is use money from the nuclear waste fund to give monetary and in-kind compensation to the utilities. That is what section 105 of the bill now authorizes. Listen to what 51 State agencies from 35 different States told a District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals in January 1998 about this concept. This is a quote from their pleadings in that case: The Court should act decisively to bar DOE from using the NWF [Nuclear Waste Fund] and ongoing fee payments to pay the costs and damages resulting from its deliberate noncompliance. Even the potential for DOE to consider such a course should be immediately invalidated. . . . That is what the States said in 1998, and in this legislation we instruct the Secretary of Energy to do exactly what 35 States pleaded with the court not to allow the Department of Energy to do. The No. 1 remedy sought by the 35 States in this lawsuit, several pages after this statement, was a court order forbidding the Department of Energy from doing what section 105 of this bill now tells the Department of Energy to do. I am not making this statement based on some unsigned, undated document. We have a copy of the signed petition to the court here. I am glad to share that with any colleague who wants to review it between now and the time of our final vote. On that document, many of us will see the signature of our Attorney General, our respective attorneys general from the States, or our representatives from the public utility commissions in our States. The bottom line is this bill is not going to fix what is wrong with the Department of Energy's nuclear waste program. On the contrary, it will move us further from a final solution we need to achieve. We should not pass the legislation. I hope my colleagues will join me in voting against it. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee for his remarks. I will make a few remarks this afternoon. There will be more in the morning. I will be back on the floor in the morning to express it in more detail. First of all, for anybody who is watching this debate and trying to understand what is happening, it is not easy to understand because we have a complicated set of procedures we have followed around here to get to this point. Yesterday, I outlined my reasons for opposing the manager's amendment that was being considered at that time. It was No. 2808. That was the manager's amendment on which we voted to invoke cloture, or to bring debate to a close. I said at that time I believed the overall legislation, not that particular amendment but the overall legislation, was very important and was necessary to solve particular problems we have with our nuclear waste program, but that the particular provisions in that amendment that was before us yesterday did not solve those problems and, in fact, the particular language in that amendment created some additional problems. That was why I could not support the language we were considering yesterday. We have, of course, gone beyond that. We now have a new substitute amendment which has many changes in it. It was my hope that when we got to this substitute, it would fix the problems and concerns I had. I commend the chairman of the committee for a number of constructive improvements he did make in this substitute. Unfortunately, though, my own view is that while the new substitute makes improvements, there are still serious flaws and, more important than that even, there is a major step backward, and that relates to the dropping of the take title provision. I will try to explain in more detail why I think the take title provision is important to us. Let me also parenthetically say, I can sympathize with the statement the chairman makes about people who criticize and offer no alternative. Let me make it very clear, and I do not think this will be disputed by the chairman or anyone else, from the beginning of this process, I have not only expressed concerns, I have offered alternative language. In fact, when we were considering this bill in committee, I offered a complete substitute that was voted on by the committee and was defeated at that time but got quite a few votes. It is not as though we have refused to offer alternatives. We have offered alternatives. They have not been acceptable. I understand that. Each Senator votes their best judgment, and their best judgment was that the alternatives were not improvements. I disagree strongly with that judgment. This new substitute on which we are getting ready to vote tomorrow morning--and we will, as I said before, have time to speak about it tomorrow morning; we will have an hour equally divided--eliminates the so-called take title provision which was the core of the committee- reported bill and was the focus of our efforts to reach a consensus with the administration. Let me explain a little bit about what this take title provision is because that is probably not understood well by a lot of folks who have not spent a lot of time on this subject. The Federal Government, particularly the Department of Energy, was obligated to actually take delivery of this nuclear waste that had been developed at these nuclear powerplants around the country by January 31, 1998. We had written that into the law. We said that is an obligation, the Department of Energy has to do it, and the Department of Energy entered into contracts with the various utilities around the country. The map is not up right now, but every place you saw a dot on that map, there is a utility, and they have entered into contracts with the Department of Energy where the Department of Energy says: We will accept your waste at a particular time, and we will move it to a permanent repository. We in Congress were way too optimistic, and the Department of Energy was too optimistic about how quickly they could do all this. They entered into these contracts. When January 31, 1998, came, the Department of Energy had no place to put this waste, so they defaulted on at least the first of those contracts. The contracts become due. The obligation of the Department of Energy to pick up that waste and move it to a site becomes due each year to more and more utilities as we move forward. So today the reality is we have a bunch of lawsuits, lawsuits in the Court of Claims, by utilities against the Department of Energy, saying: You owe us money; you are continuing to be in default; you should have picked this waste up; you have not picked the waste up; for every day you don't pick the waste up, you owe us some more money. That is the situation. The take title provision was a provision we worked out with Senator Murkowski, with the Department of Energy, and with my staff to solve that problem. Basically, what it said was that we would give authority to the Department of Energy to enter into a contract--if a utility wanted to--whereby that utility would give up title to the waste, the Department of Energy would take title to the waste, and that would be done as part of a settlement of the litigation that is presently pending or that would otherwise be filed. We provided a particular length of time in which utilities would have to decide whether they wanted to enter into negotiations to do this, whether they wanted to take advantage of this. There was nothing mandated. But it was a way out of this morass of litigation in which the Department of Energy now finds itself. This bill we are going to vote on at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning eliminates that way out. That way out was a main reason for actually considering this bill. It was the core reason our committee reported the bill in the first place. It was the core reason I thought it was important for us to go ahead and pass the legislation. The new substitute still does preserve the Department of Energy's authority to settle lawsuits arising from its failure to meet its contractual obligations to begin accepting this waste in 1998, by reducing the fees they pay or providing other forms of financial relief. That is still in the bill. But the Department already has that authority. We did not need to legislate that authority again. I think it is clear to anybody who will study it for a little bit, it is not an objectionable part of the bill but it is an unnecessary part of the bill. What the Department lacks, and what we were trying to provide in the legislation, and what would benefit the country, the taxpayers, the utilities--particularly the taxpayers, because the taxpayers ultimately are going to wind up footing the cost of the judgments, whatever judgments are imposed on the Federal Government--but what clearly would benefit all of these groups and individuals I have talked about here is for the Department to take title to the utilities' waste and assume financial and legal liability for management pending the completion of the repository. The truth is, Yucca Mountain is being characterized. It is not being done as quickly as we would like because we have not provided all the funds necessary to do it on a timely basis, but it is being characterized. If it passes muster in the final analysis, if it can meet the standards the Environmental Protection Agency establishes, and then is going to be used, it is still going to be 8 or 10 years from now before waste will actually be moved to that site. That is just the reality. It is not a question of whether you like it or dislike it; that is just the reality. What we were trying to say is, during these 8 or 10 years, there is no reason why the Federal Government's liability for not moving that waste beginning in 1998 should continue to grow and to accrue. The new substitute drops that provision. The new substitute eliminates this way out for the Department of Energy, for the utilities, and, more importantly than anything, for the American taxpayers. There are other provisions where this new substitute we will vote on tomorrow, like the original one, creates problems that would limit the ability of the Department of Energy's waste program to succeed. Let me mention a few. The substitute imposes deadlines on the Department of Energy, saying the Department must ship spent fuel to Nevada on a schedule that the Department of Energy says they cannot meet. I know that is what we did before. We set a deadline. At that time, the Department of Energy did not say they could not meet it. But at any rate, we set a deadline they did not meet and now we have litigation. If we pass this bill, we are in danger of setting another deadline or another series of deadlines which this time the Department says they cannot meet--of course, prompting a lot of new litigation as a result of that. So it holds the Government and the taxpayers liable if the Department of Energy misses those deadlines. There are also some broader issues affecting the program we have been unable to address in this bill that I think are important to consider. One example is Northern States Power's problem. This gets a little bit arcane, but I do not think too arcane. Under Minnesota law, Northern States Power will have to shut down the Prairie Island nuclear powerplant in January of 2007 if the Department of Energy has not picked up Prairie Island's waste by that date. That is Minnesota law I just paraphrased for you. The manager's substitute could require the Department to enter into a ``backup'' storage contract with Northern States Power to take the Prairie Island waste to Yucca Mountain so that Prairie Island can keep operating. The problem is, the Department of Energy will not be able to honor that contract by January of 2007, so the provision does not prevent the reactor from shutting down. The truth is, we have put in a requirement that the Department of Energy cannot meet. There are also funding problems besetting our nuclear waste program. As I said yesterday, I think this is one of the most critical problems facing the Yucca Mountain program. The substitute does nothing to make the balances in the nuclear waste fund more readily available or even to make deferred payments for waste generated before 1983, the so- called one-time fee under current law available to the program. I believe this latter provision would not score under our budget rules since it is currently outside the 10-year scoring window. That is pretty arcane, but it is an important provision. By dropping the take title provision and by failing to make this simple budget adjustment, in my view, the manager's substitute fails to capture and apply this important source of funds to the program when it is urgently needed. None of us is ever 100-percent satisfied with any vote we cast here in the Senate. We all have to compromise, to give things away, to settle for less than a perfect bill. Senator Murkowski has certainly shown his willingness to do that. I, too, believe I have done that and shown my willingness to make concessions on key issues--issues such as funding, on capping the nuclear waste fee, on potentially shifting the funding burden to taxpayers, conveying 76,000 acres of Federal lands to Nevada localities. These are all things in the bill that I have not thought were really appropriate, but I am certainly willing to compromise on them in order to reach agreement. But as I look at the new amended bill on which we are going to vote tomorrow, and I try to weigh it in relation to the Nation and the taxpayers--what the Nation and the taxpayers of the country are getting versus what they are giving up--I find that the balance that is required for me to support the end result is not there. Legislators, as doctors, need to obey the rule: First do no harm. When I look at the substitute on which we are going to vote tomorrow, to my mind, it does more harm than good. Unfortunately, as a result, I will be compelled to vote against it. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I thank the Chair, as well as the Senator from Alaska. Let me first discuss where we are procedurally because I think it is important to put my comments in context. We are going to vote at 2:30 on a cloture motion to proceed to consider an amendment I will be discussing in my remarks. There have been substantial discussions between the chairman and me since that amendment was distributed last Friday. It is my understanding there are going to be major changes made to this amendment after the cloture vote occurs. We will be able to see those. We have not seen them in writing yet, but we have had extensive discussion. I want to make it clear that I will raise serious questions about the bill on which we are voting cloture. At the same time, I will indicate I support cloture so we can move the process forward and I hope we can find in the course of this debate a way to resolve the issues to which I will allude in these comments. The issue of disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste has been debated in the Senate, in one form or another, as long as I have been a Member. Nuclear waste is a serious issue that demands serious attention by all Senators. It is a problem that is national in scope. It is also a particular responsibility of the Federal Government. After all, it was the Federal Government that proposed, beginning with the Atoms for Peace Program in the Eisenhower administration, to develop the peaceful uses of nuclear power. The problems of disposal of spent nuclear fuel that we face today are the legacy of our past laws and decisions. There are serious problems facing the national nuclear waste program that merit attention now, in this Congress. I have some important disagreements with the chairman. I will go through those in some detail here, about the substitute amendment that is going to be voted on, on cloture, because I believe that particular amendment is fatally flawed in several respects. But I also believe the chairman is doing the right thing by pushing the issue to decision and by forcing the Senate and the Congress to grapple with the issue of how to store our Nation's nuclear waste. Let me point out what I think are some of the important nuclear waste-related issues that call out for our attention and require us to take some action, if we can, in this Congress. First, ratepayers have paid over $8 billion in fees to the nuclear waste fund. That money which has been paid in has earned about $2 billion in interest. Only $5 billion of that total of $10 billion has been spent on the program. Our current budget rules and accounting principles make it nearly impossible to give the program, each year, the appropriation it deserves and requires. For example, in fiscal year 1996, the President asked for $640 million for DOE's Yucca Mountain program. Congress appropriated $315 million, less than half of that. As a result, the program had to abandon a comprehensive program plan that was less than 2 years old and go through yet one more strategic planning exercise to figure out how to cope with the inadequate funding they had been provided. The result of all this is to create considerable concern on the part of many about this nuclear waste program, in particular the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which has stated the program is not making adequate technical progress at Yucca Mountain in order to make a defensible determination of its suitability in the next few years. I think that is a concern we need to take seriously in the Senate. Not surprisingly, the utilities themselves and the public utility commissions and the States that are paying in $600 million each year and seeing only a fraction of that being spent, and the possibility looming there will be further delays because we lack the technical answers to questions about site suitability, are also upset by the state of affairs, and they have every right to be. Let me go on to another reason why we need to address this issue in this Congress. The Department of Energy did not meet the January 31, 1998, deadline to which Chairman Murkowski referred. That is a deadline to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Not only did we not meet that, we are way behind the original schedule in building the repository. Utilities and ratepayers are beginning to make plans to pay for onsite storage for spent fuel in addition to what they would otherwise have needed if the Department of Energy had met its deadline. While many thought the 1998 deadline was unrealistic when it was first picked as a target date, nobody thought we would miss it by as wide a margin as we have. Lawsuits have been filed. The Department of Energy has concluded it does not have the legal authority to settle the suits by directly addressing the needs of utilities to do something with the fuel that is on their hands. So additional legislation is required to deal with that issue. Hopefully, we can come up with an agreement on that legislation before we conclude action on this bill. We could choose to ignore the problem, but I believe we would do so somewhat at our own peril. Lawsuits are working their way through the Court of Federal Claims with contradictory results at the lower levels of the court, so no one can say how the courts will ultimately rule on the Department of Energy's contractual obligations--but the Federal courts have surprised the Government previously in recent years with rulings in favor of the utilities. A third reason we need to deal with this in this Congress is the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste is a legitimate concern to the communities through which it will travel on its way from the nuclear plants where it is located to any repository. This is true nationwide. It is true in my own State of New Mexico. The standards governing shipment of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste are currently below those for less radioactive waste streams, such as the waste going to the WIPP project in my own State. This situation arises because Congress instituted higher standards for packaging and shipment of transuranic waste in the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act of 1992. The WIPP provisions have, so far, had some success. One could argue whether there are lessons learned that should be applied to spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste in the form of even stricter requirements than for WIPP, since spent fuel and high-level waste plausibly involve greater risks to the public, in case of an accident. It certainly does not make much sense, though, and it is not in the public interest to ignore the advances in standards and transportation procedures that have occurred since passage of the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. These issues I mentioned speak for themselves. It is possible to build a good set of amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and to deal with these problems. The amendment we are going to vote cloture on does not do that. I hope the substitute we can come up with will. Let me cite some areas where we have agreement because there are some. Clearly, those need to be mentioned. Anyone who looks at the substitute amendment and compares it to the original bill introduced in the Congress has to admit, and I readily do, that although there are still crucial flaws in the bill, major progress has been made on a number of topics--progress toward getting a decent bill. These include abandoning the plan to have interim storage in Nevada while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is deliberating on the license application for the permanent repository. That was major progress for which I commend the chairman. Second, embracing instead a plan to have the Department of Energy authorized to take title to fuel where it can work out settlement agreements with utilities, that is also major progress in my view. And making a significant move toward accepting the EPA's final rulemaking authority, that is important. I hope that is something to which we can finally agree. But there are areas of disagreement. Let me mention those very briefly. They include restrictions on the EPA standard-setting process; second, inadequate transportation safeguards--these are concerns with the bill which we are voting cloture on; third, one-sided take-title provisions--I can go into detail on these; fourth, the support for foreign reprocessing of nuclear fuel which, to my mind, is not a good investment of taxpayer dollars. If there is research to be done, we should go ahead and do it, and there is clearly research to be done. And fifth, neglect for the pressing funding needs of the program, that also is not addressed. Preserving the integrity of the EPA rulemaking process for the Yucca Mountain radiation standard is one of the threshold issues in this bill. The chairman's substitute dilutes both EPA's rulemaking authority for the remainder of this administration as well as changing the substantive standard of protection. Right now, the standard EPA has to follow is to protect public health and safety and the environment. Under the chairman's substitute, EPA, for the next 16 months, would be able to do so only to the extent that it would allow the agency to meet the standard of being ``attainable'' at Yucca Mountain. This effectively stacks the deck in the standard-setting process. It also, in my view, may create a more lasting problem of legitimacy for the standard and for the program as a whole in the minds of disinterested citizens. In New Mexico, we have had experience with EPA standard setting for radioactive waste disposal facilities. EPA both set the compliance criteria for the waste isolation pilot plant, or WIPP, and certified that the faculty, as built, met those criteria. It was a long and arduous process. But in the end, the fact that EPA was able to do the job on the merits was important to the facility gaining legitimacy in the minds of most New Mexicans. I believe that EPA can do a fair job of setting a standard for Yucca Mountain, and I will continue in that belief until someone shows me the record in this rulemaking that indicates the contrary. Surely, the draft rule published by EPA last August, which laid out a number of options for such a standard, cannot be characterized as arbitrary or capricious. DOE, the NRC, and the National Academy of Sciences have taken exception to a number of options and approaches in the rule, as is their right. They have put comments in the rulemaking file that EPA will have to grapple with honestly, if the agency wants to see its standard survive judicial review. Given this, I would not favor either transferring the job of EPA to another agency, or giving some other Federal agency an effective veto over EPA's discretion. The bill reported from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources did the former, and the chairman's substitute did the latter. This is a major reason for my opposition to this substitute. A second major concern that I have with the substitute is its approach toward the transportation of nuclear waste. Transportation of nuclear waste is a matter of concern to many members of the general public. The chairman's substitute does not address these concerns adequately, in my view. There is no independent oversight of the design and manufacture of the shipping canisters in which nuclear waste will travel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has testified before the Senate Energy Committee that it lacks adequate regulatory authority over DOE shipments. Unfortunately, this gap in regulatory authority is not addressed in the bill or the substitute. What is in the bill looks like an excessively ornate structure of plans that conflict with one another and probably give rise to lost of litigation. It is hard to see how that sort of extra bureaucracy protects public safety. In addition to provisions that don't effectively protect the safety of citizens living along routes where nuclear waste will be transported, the chairman's substitute contains provisions that cancel out certain routes in certain states, by means of criteria such as maximum downgrade percentages. I would oppose this sort of provision on principle, as I have consistently opposed carve-out amendments on prior nuclear waste bills. In this particular case, my own State of New Mexico is being particularly disadvantaged, as trucking routes in Colorado are canceled out, thereby shifting truck shipments through Wyoming on I-80 and New Mexico on I-25 and I-40. Speaking for New Mexicans, I can think of few worse places for a truck of nuclear waste than on the interchange, in the center of Albuquerque, of I-25 and I- 40. New Mexicans call it the ``Big I,'' and it is legendary for its poor design. A third major flaw in this bill concerns the ground rules that the bill lays out for the Department of Energy in its negotiations with the utilities over taking title to spent nuclear fuel. The only reason to have a take-title mechanism is to respond to DOE's non-performance with respect to specific contracts. Yet, the language of the chairman's substitute contains several changes to what the committee reported last spring on these lines. All these changes are in the direction of clouding the issue of what DOE is responsible for. The probable result of this blurring of responsibility is that numerous utilities will claim that the Congress intends for DOE to go beyond making them whole for specific non-performance on specific contracts. The bill for this extra scope for DOE's relief of the utilities will be borne by either the general taxpayer or the Nuclear Waste Fund, and both sources of funds are a problem. In the former case, it is not fair. In the latter instance, the Waste Fund is already supposed to pay for the repository and the legitimate costs of taking title. It is not reasonable to create a scenario where utilities can claim that Congress intended DOE to pay more than those legitimate costs associated with contractual breaches. A fourth major flaw in the bill is its authorization for DOE to spend taxpayer dollars to fund foreign reprocessing and transmutation activities in countries that are not willing to pay for such activities themselves. I do not know why we should have blanket authority for DOE to spread reprocessing technology worldwide in this manner. Most other countries that have looked at the sort of reprocessing and transmutation that would be supported by this bill have concluded that there are serious technical challenges that will take decades to resolve. Our own National Academy of Sciences agreed in its 1996 report on ``Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separations and Transmutation.'' Finally, the fifth major flaw in the bill is its lack of attention to the most critical problem facing the Yucca Mountain program--the lack of funding to characterize the mountain properly, or to build the repository, if authorized. The chairman's substitute does nothing either to make the balances in the Nuclear Waste Fund more readily available to fund the work needed to demonstrate the mountain's suitability and licensability, or even to make a special one-time fee under current law for certain utilities directly available to the program. The latter provision would not score under our budget rules, since it is currently outside the 10-year scoring window. If DOE took title to fuel from certain utilities, it might be able to collect the one-time fee early, but without special legislation, the fee would vanish into the Treasury without a trace, and without helping the program. Let me get to a conclusion so others can speak before we go into recess for our caucuses. I do think this issue of adequate funding so the program can go forward, so the site can be characterized, is absolutely crucial. I hope very much the Senate will address that before we pass a bill or before we conclude action on an amendment on the Senate floor in the form of a substitute. Let me conclude my remarks by reiterating the basic principles behind my opposition to the substitute amendment. These are things which I hope very much can be resolved in the alternative that is now being prepared and is going to be available for us to review this afternoon. We ought to focus, in this legislation, on making the current program work. That means, No. 1, giving the Department of Energy the tools it needs to resolve current litigation over its failure to meet past contractual obligations. I hope we can do that in an effective way. Second, it means upgrading transportation standards for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste. Again, I hope we can do that in the legislation we finally act on. Third, it means making the needed funds available to characterize Yucca Mountain, and to build Yucca Mountain if it is licensed by the NRC. I hope we can act on that. The fourth item is, the program does not need to suffer a loss of public legitimacy by legislatively stacking the deck against EPA's ability to carry out its statutory authority on protecting health and safety. We can find a solution to that. I hope very much we do. Finally, the fifth item I want to mention is the program does not need extra doses of paper-pushing bureaucracy and bureaucracy related to transportation of nuclear waste, accompanied with unrealistic deadlines for putting waste on the road. We found that we, American taxpayers, have incurred substantial liability because of our writing into law deadlines which turned out to be unrealistic before. Let's not make that same mistake again in legislation on the Senate floor this week. I did not support the chairman's amendment even though I appreciate his attempts to improve it. He has been negotiating in good faith to improve this amendment, and I greatly appreciate that. We have not seen that alternative substitute provision, so I cannot say whether we have reached agreement or not on the various items I have identified, but I hope we have made progress on each of them. It is important to move the process forward. It is important to come to closure on this bill in a bipartisan way. This is not a partisan matter. I hope all Senators will support the effort to invoke cloture so we can move ahead, and then I hope we can all work in good faith to improve the basic bill we are considering before we have to vote on a final bill. Obviously, I could not support a vote in favor of the final bill on which we are invoking cloture, but I hope before the process concludes I can support a piece of legislation that will solve the problems I have enumerated. I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I hope to speak for about 15 minutes to give an opening statement explaining my views on this issue. I know there are other Senators wishing to speak on this issue. I have no need for additional time other than that.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, if I could make a parliamentary inquiry, it is my understanding we have a unanimous consent agreement in place calling for a vote on the cloture motion at 2:15.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about an exciting new project that was announced recently-- Intel's ``Teach to the Future'' program. Intel has joined forces with Microsoft and a number of other companies to train 100,000 of our elementary and secondary school teachers in how to use information technology to improve what our kids learn. Intel will invest $100 million in this project and Microsoft will contribute more than $300 million in software, its largest donation ever. Intel and its partners deserve to be strongly commended by the Senate and the Congress for their forward thinking efforts. The goal of Intel's Teach to the Future Program is to train 100,000 American teachers in 1,000 days. This year Intel will make grants to 5 regional training agencies in Northern California, Oregon, Texas, and Arizona that will each train 100 Master Teachers in a 40-hour curriculum on effectively applying computer technology to improve student learning. This award-winning curriculum was developed over the last two years by the Institute for Computer Technology; over 80% of the teachers who've been trained by it felt that it enhanced their student's learning. These 500 Master Teachers will return to their school districts, embedding the expertise locally by training an additional 20 teachers. By the end of this year, 10,000 teachers will be trained. Next year, the program will expand to include my home state of New Mexico, along with Washington State, Massachusetts, Utah, Southern California, Washington, DC, and elsewhere in order to train 40,000 teachers. Finally, the program will again expand to train 50,000 teachers in 2002. We have been working hard on the federal, state, and local levels to provide schools with computers, software and access to the Internet. I authored several programs in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1994 that have gone a long way toward these goals. Studies of the existing uses of technology in schools demonstrate, however, that these investments have not been optimized because teachers have not been adequately trained in its use--particularly its curriculum-based use. The availability of hardware is irrelevant if teachers are not properly trained, because it's teachers who teach, not technology. Only 20% of today's teachers feel really prepared to use technology in the classroom. Given the dynamic nature of technology and the influx of new teachers we expect to enter the classroom in the next few years, it's easy to see how this problem could get worse if we don't focus on it. The average school spends less--often significantly less--than 1% of its technology funds on training. The Department of Education, the CEO Forum and other experts have determined that the appropriate investment should be closer to 30%. In response to this need, I have worked closely with Senator Murray to secure funding for a pre-service technology training program in the education budget. As we approach reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, I also have made teacher training the centerpiece of my proposal for reauthorization of the Education Technology programs in ESEA--``S. 1604: the Technology for Teaching Act.'' Even with the continued commitment of companies like Intel, we must provide federal support and leadership for technology training for all teachers in all fifty states. Intel's ``Teach to the Future'' project is an outstanding example of good corporate citizenship; one that should be instructive for politicians, educators, and corporations across the nation. Intel and its corporate partners clearly recognize that--just as information technology has revolutionized the workplace and the marketplace--it also promises to transform the schoolhouse. Perhaps, more importantly, however, these companies recognize that we must transform the schoolhouse in order to continue the economic revolution. We in Congress must support their efforts by increasing the federal commitment to educational technology and teacher training in this area.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the chairman, Senator Murkowski, yielding. First, I compliment him and, of course, Senator Akaka, who is the moving force behind this legislation on the Democratic side. I think this legislation, S. 1052, is a very important and overdue piece of legislation. I know both Senator Akaka and Senator Murkowski have worked tirelessly and persistently to bring these issues to our attention. I compliment them on that. I will give a short statement, and then Senator Akaka will be managing the bill on the Democratic side. I am sure he has much more information to provide on the legislation. Both Senator Murkowski and Senator Akaka traveled to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and witnessed the problems there firsthand. I am very glad to join them as a cosponsor on this important piece of legislation. Our committee held several hearings over the years and established a record concerning the very serious problems that exist in the CNMI. Moreover, three successive administrations from both parties, beginning with the Reagan administration, have expressed concerns about the situation in the CNMI. Many problems have been identified, and they have been discussed over many years. However, clearly the central problem relates to this immigration issue. S. 1052 only addresses immigration. This bill represents a modest step toward implementing the reforms that are long overdue. The current immigration system, administered by the local government, is inconsistent with longstanding U.S. immigration policy in several respects. Let me just detail some of that. U.S. policy, first of all, does not allow the importation of temporary workers for permanent jobs. Second, it allows people coming into the United States for permanent jobs to have the opportunity to become participating members of society, including the right to vote and to be eligible for citizenship. Local CNMI immigration law not only allows large-scale use of temporary alien workers for permanent jobs, it also prohibits temporary alien workers from settling permanently in the CNMI and becoming U.S. citizens. The most disturbing result of the CNMI's current immigration system is the documented, consistent and even increasing human rights abuses which these alien workers suffer. Moreover, despite promises of the American dream, alien laborers coming to CNMI often sign contracts waiving rights and freedoms guaranteed to U.S. workers. These include the right to change employers, the right to participate in religious and political activities, and in some cases even the right to marriage. This bill before us is not a controversial bill. It should not be a controversial bill. It was reported from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a voice vote with no dissenting opinions expressed. Last Congress, the committee reported a similar bill. In order to address concerns by the local CNMI government that the bill will adversely affect their economy, the bill also contains many special provisions. Among these special provisions is one that requires the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Labor to provide financial and technical assistance to help them diversify their economy and train local workers. I hope the Senate will act quickly and pass this bill. I again compliment Senator Akaka and Senator Murkowski for their leadership on this important matter. I yield the floor. I know at some point Senator Akaka wishes to speak to the matter as well.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill, along with Senator Domenici, which will move us toward resolving a long standing issue of great controversy in my State of New Mexico. Today marks the anniversary of one of the most significant dates in the creation of modern America. On this date one hundred and fifty-two years ago, our government and the government of Mexico entered into an agreement which ended a bloody war, and which brought a huge swath of territory into the United States. The addition of this new territory, which became the American Southwest, forever changed the makeup of our nation, its place on the world stage, and its culture. The infusion of a large Hispanic population and a myriad of Native American communities into fabric of American society enriched the diversity of country and strengthened the dynamism of our culture. It is day which should be one for celebration. A day in which New Mexicans should reflect on the confluence of cultures which make up our state. It is a day to remember the sweat and grit of the people who traveled north up El Camino Real (the Royal Road) passing through one area that was so arduous that it was known as La Jornada del Muerte (the Journey of Death), and those who came west over the Santa Fe trail to reach New Mexico and who, together with the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo peoples who had already carved a life out of this arid land, built our modern culture. It is a day for celebration, but unfortunately it is also a day which recalls great pain for many. For that agreement between nations which established the American Southwest, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, also carried with it a promise to the new citizens of America. That promise was that their ownership of lands established under Spanish and Mexican law would be respected and validated by their new government. Many who would be celebrating today do not believe that that promise was kept. The serious questions that have been raised concerning the validation of Spanish and Mexican community land grant claims in New Mexico cast a cloud over this day, and a cloud over our national honor. Given the long history of dispute over community land grant claims in New Mexico, and the large amount of disputed land, a credible neutral analysis of the United States' implementation of the Treaty has been needed. To that end, Senator Domenici and I have requested that the General Accounting Office review the United States' legal obligations under the Treaty and whether the Federal government met those obligations with regard to community land grant claims. This will be the first national study of the issue, and it is overdue. Given how long it has taken for the heirs of these land grants to get a credible review of their claims, it is that important that this study not end up gathering dust on some shelf. If the GAO finds that the United States denied these communities their rights under the treaty, then it is imperative that the Federal government develop a remedy to resolve this issue. Therefore I, along with Senator Domenici, am introducing a bill today which will move us in that direction. This bill would require that, should the GAO find that the United States has failed to meet its Treaty obligations, the Justice Department prepare for the President a list of methods to remedy the problem, and that the President must propose to Congress his preferred remedy. Unlike the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which was an agreement between nations, this bill represents a promise directly to land grant heirs that their claim will be fully considered by the United States Government. I hope we can pass this measure, and make that promise to them. Mr. President I ask that the bill be printed in the Record. The bill follows:

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a bill, along with Senator Domenici, which will move us toward resolving a long standing issue of great controversy in my State of New Mexico. Today marks the anniversary of one of the most significant dates in the creation of modern America. On this date one hundred and fifty-two years ago, our government and the government of Mexico entered into an agreement which ended a bloody war, and which brought a huge swath of territory into the United States. The addition of this new territory, which became the American Southwest, forever changed the makeup of our nation, its place on the world stage, and its culture. The infusion of a large Hispanic population and a myriad of Native American communities into fabric of American society enriched the diversity of country and strengthened the dynamism of our culture. It is day which should be one for celebration. A day in which New Mexicans should reflect on the confluence of cultures which make up our state. It is a day to remember the sweat and grit of the people who traveled north up El Camino Real (the Royal Road) passing through one area that was so arduous that it was known as La Jornada del Muerte (the Journey of Death), and those who came west over the Santa Fe trail to reach New Mexico and who, together with the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo peoples who had already carved a life out of this arid land, built our modern culture. It is a day for celebration, but unfortunately it is also a day which recalls great pain for many. For that agreement between nations which established the American Southwest, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, also carried with it a promise to the new citizens of America. That promise was that their ownership of lands established under Spanish and Mexican law would be respected and validated by their new government. Many who would be celebrating today do not believe that that promise was kept. The serious questions that have been raised concerning the validation of Spanish and Mexican community land grant claims in New Mexico cast a cloud over this day, and a cloud over our national honor. Given the long history of dispute over community land grant claims in New Mexico, and the large amount of disputed land, a credible neutral analysis of the United States' implementation of the Treaty has been needed. To that end, Senator Domenici and I have requested that the General Accounting Office review the United States' legal obligations under the Treaty and whether the Federal government met those obligations with regard to community land grant claims. This will be the first national study of the issue, and it is overdue. Given how long it has taken for the heirs of these land grants to get a credible review of their claims, it is that important that this study not end up gathering dust on some shelf. If the GAO finds that the United States denied these communities their rights under the treaty, then it is imperative that the Federal government develop a remedy to resolve this issue. Therefore I, along with Senator Domenici, am introducing a bill today which will move us in that direction. This bill would require that, should the GAO find that the United States has failed to meet its Treaty obligations, the Justice Department prepare for the President a list of methods to remedy the problem, and that the President must propose to Congress his preferred remedy. Unlike the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, which was an agreement between nations, this bill represents a promise directly to land grant heirs that their claim will be fully considered by the United States Government. I hope we can pass this measure, and make that promise to them. Mr. President I ask that the bill be printed in the Record. The bill follows:

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing legislation which will end the practice of charging States for costs the Federal Government incurs in managing Federal mineral leases. The Mineral Revenue Payments Clarification Act of 1999 will eliminate net receipts sharing, allowing Federal agencies to more rationally and fairly apportion to States their share of Federal mineral revenues. Since enactment of the Mineral Leasing Act in 1920, Congress has determined that it was fair and appropriate to share with States a portion of the money received by the United States for Federal mineral leases located within the State. Under current law, for most mineral leases the State share is 50 percent, except for Alaska which receives 90 percent. In 1993, a permanent provision was added to the Omnibus Appropriations Act that requires the Department of the Interior to deduct from a State's share 50 percent of the Federal Government's costs of administering Federal mineral leases within that State. This new requirement substantially lowers the amounts States receive, but was added without either explanation or justification as to why such a deduction is either fair or appropriate. Furthermore, the statutory procedures for figuring these deductions are cumbersome to the point of being unworkable. The Federal agencies charged with administering these requirements have found them difficult, and sometimes impossible, to implement in any consistent fashion. In November of 1997, the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior found that the Department had inaccurately calculated the costs involved in administering the Federal onshore mineral leasing program, resulting in substantial overcharges to States. This issue has yet to be fully resolved by the Department of the Interior. Needless to say, this complicated and unjustified provision has been controversial with the States and unpopular with the Federal agencies charged with administering it. It penalizes States while creating administrative nightmares for the Federal Government. It is time to do away with this unwieldy provision. Therefore, I am introducing The Mineral Revenue Payments Clarification Act of 1999, which will eliminate this provision and provide that States' shares of payments under Federal mineral leases will not be reduced by administrative or other costs incurred by the United States. I believe that this will return a system that is both fair, and capable of being administered in a reasonable fashion.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, today, I am introducing legislation which will end the practice of charging States for costs the Federal Government incurs in managing Federal mineral leases. The Mineral Revenue Payments Clarification Act of 1999 will eliminate net receipts sharing, allowing Federal agencies to more rationally and fairly apportion to States their share of Federal mineral revenues. Since enactment of the Mineral Leasing Act in 1920, Congress has determined that it was fair and appropriate to share with States a portion of the money received by the United States for Federal mineral leases located within the State. Under current law, for most mineral leases the State share is 50 percent, except for Alaska which receives 90 percent. In 1993, a permanent provision was added to the Omnibus Appropriations Act that requires the Department of the Interior to deduct from a State's share 50 percent of the Federal Government's costs of administering Federal mineral leases within that State. This new requirement substantially lowers the amounts States receive, but was added without either explanation or justification as to why such a deduction is either fair or appropriate. Furthermore, the statutory procedures for figuring these deductions are cumbersome to the point of being unworkable. The Federal agencies charged with administering these requirements have found them difficult, and sometimes impossible, to implement in any consistent fashion. In November of 1997, the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior found that the Department had inaccurately calculated the costs involved in administering the Federal onshore mineral leasing program, resulting in substantial overcharges to States. This issue has yet to be fully resolved by the Department of the Interior. Needless to say, this complicated and unjustified provision has been controversial with the States and unpopular with the Federal agencies charged with administering it. It penalizes States while creating administrative nightmares for the Federal Government. It is time to do away with this unwieldy provision. Therefore, I am introducing The Mineral Revenue Payments Clarification Act of 1999, which will eliminate this provision and provide that States' shares of payments under Federal mineral leases will not be reduced by administrative or other costs incurred by the United States. I believe that this will return a system that is both fair, and capable of being administered in a reasonable fashion.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, in celebration of American Indian Heritage Month I rise today to celebrate the accomplishments of one remarkable young man Notah Begay III. You may have heard of Mr. Begay as he was a two-time PGA tour winner this season with victories at the Reno-Tahoe Open and the Michelob Championship. This is a true accomplishment by any standard, but even more significant when you consider that he is only 27. I rise today to honor Mr. Begay because of the fact that he is the first full-blooded Native American to play on the Professional Golf Association Tour. Notah's path to success is uncommon among his peers in the PGA. He didn't grow up in a privileged environment. While the Begay family was not poor, they did not have the resources to pay for costly private golf lessons for young Notah. In exchange for golf balls and practice time, Notah often woke up at 5:00 AM to move carts, wash range balls and serve as an all-around gopher at the city-owned course in Albuquerque. And when Notah visited his grandparents on the Navajo Reservation, the determined young golfer would hit golf balls off of the hard clay dirt of the reservation. Still today, the Navajo Nation does not have one golf course on its 25,000 square miles. Despite his uncommon beginnings, Notah has been truly successful at every level of competition. During high school, Notah led his high school basketball team to back-to-back state championships. But more impressive, he was the No. 2 junior golfer in the nation. After high school, Notah traveled west to Stanford University. Although Notah's teammate, Tiger Woods, is often spotlighted by the media, it was Notah and his Stanford teammates who won the 1994 NCAA Championship trophy, one year before Mr. Woods joined the team. Notah played an integral role by shooting a 62 in the second round of the Championship tournament, a tournament record that remains today. And while many great college athletes do not finish their studies, I am very proud to say that Notah is a fellow graduate of Stanford, earning a degree in economics. Notah turned pro after college and has been quickly rising in the PGA ranks. At the Nike Dominion Open this year he became only the third player in history to shoot a 59 on a U.S. pro tour. He joins Al Geiberger and Chip Beck as the only players to score such a feat. Because of his outstanding success this year, Notah is a candidate for top rookie honors. Notah has dedicated himself to providing new opportunities for young Native Americans. By working to raise money to establish golf programs at reservation schools and seeking donations of golf equipment for kids who could never afford the costly clubs, Notah is providing the tools that may lead to more great golfers with Native American roots. In some ways, Notah Begay's success is not surprising. He is half Navajo and half Pueblo Indian and he follows a tradition of courage and strength, exemplified by his grandfather. Notah's grandfather, Notah Begay I, was one of the famous Code Talkers during World War II. The Code Talkers relayed sensitive information for the United States military through a code based on the Navajo language. They proved to be a critical component of the military intelligence during World War II. Notah's unprecedented success has shown a generation of young Americans that with hard work and dedication, any dream is achievable. The success Notah has earned is equal only to the inspiration he provides for Native American youth in my home state of New Mexico and across the country. I commend him not only for his golf success, but also for his commitment to the youth of New Mexico. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, the appropriation for the Department of Education includes an additional $134 million, added during final negotiations over the bill, to promote school accountability and improvement under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which funds educational services to educationally disadvantaged children. These funds will provide critical resources to schools most in need--those in need of improvement and identified for corrective action under Title I. Dedicated funds are necessary to develop improvement strategies and to hold schools accountable for continuous student improvement. The federal government directs over $8 billion dollars of federal funding to provide critical support programs for disadvantaged students under Title I, but the accountability provisions in Title I have not been adequately implemented due to insufficient resources. Title I authorizes state school support teams to provide support for schoolwide programs and to provide assistance to schools in need of improvement through activities such as professional development or identifying resources for changing instruction and organization. In 1998, only eight states reported that school support terms have been able to serve the majority of schools identified as in need of improvement. Less than half of the schools identified as being in need of improvement in 1997- 98 reported that this designation led to additional professional development or assistance. Schools and school districts need additional support and resources to address weaknesses soon after they are identified, promote a progressively intensive range of interventions and continuously assess the results of interventions. The money provided in this appropriations bill can be used to ensure that school districts have necessary resources available to implement the corrective action provisions of Title I, by providing immediate, intensive interventions to turn around low-performing schools. The types of intervention that the school district could provide using these funds include: (1) Purchasing necessary materials such as up-to-date textbooks, curriculum, technology; (2) Providing intensive, ongoing teacher training. (3) Providing access to distance learning; (4) Extending learning time for students--after school, Saturday or summer school--to help students catch up; (5) Providing rewards to low-performing schools that show significant progress; and (6) Intensive technical assistance from teams of experts outside the school to help develop and implement school improvement plans in failing schools. The terms would determine the causes of low- performance--for example, low expectations and an outdated curriculum, poorly trained teachers, unsafe conditions) and assist in implementing research-based models for improvement. The portion of the bill relating to these additional funds also requires that school districts give students in Title I schools the option of transferring to another public school if the schools they attend have been identified as in need of improvement. This requirement applies only to districts that receive a portion of this additional money, and not to districts that do not accept these additional funds. While I have a bill that is supportive of right to transfer at the corrective action stage of the Title I accountability system, it is my understanding that the language in this appropriation bill apples only to schools accepting funding from this new funding source of $134 million.

Mr. BINGAMAN. I agree with this proposal. I want to assure my colleagues that I will work with the Chairman to provide a forum to allow the North Dakota and Missouri delegations, along with adjacent states, to resolve their concerns. c-band industry

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce today, along with my colleagues, Senators Thompson and Kennedy, a bill to establish compensation programs for workers at Department of Energy sites, contractors, and vendors who are ill because they were exposed to severe chemical and radioactive hazards while on the job. This bill, the Energy Employees' Compensation Act, will recognize three of the more egregious workplace hazards that were allowed to exist over the years at DOE facilities. The first of these situations was the exposure of workers at DOE sites and vendors to beryllium, a metal that has been used for the past 50 years in the production of nuclear weapons. Even very small amounts of exposure to beryllium can result in the onset of Chronic Beryllium Disease (CBD), an allergic lung reaction resulting in lung scarring and loss of lung function. The only treatment is the use of steroids to control the inflammation. There is no cure. Once a person has been exposed to beryllium, he or she has a lifelong risk of developing CBD. While only 1 to 6 percent of exposed people will generally develop CBD, some work tasks are associated with disease rates as high as 16 percent. Beryllium was used at 20 DOE sites, including sites in my state of New Mexico. An estimated 20,000 workers may have been exposed, including 1,000-1,500 in New Mexico. To date, DOE screening programs have identified 146 cases of CBD among current and former workers, although the number can be expected to grow. The people who are affected by this disease were typically blue-collar workers at these facilities. They are not covered by the federal workers' compensation system, and the various state workers' compensation programs are not well geared to deal with chronic occupational illnesses like CBD. I believe that, since these workers became exposed to beryllium while working in the defense of their country, the country owes them something in return, should they come down with Chronic Beryllium Disease. That is why I will fight to help the workers and their families in New Mexico and elsewhere through this part of the bill. The second situation which this bill seeks to remedy occurred at the DOE Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky. Here, workers were unknowingly exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive materials that were present in recycled uranium sent to the plant by the former Atomic Energy Commission. The AEC and the managers of the plant knew about this hazard in the 1950s, but enhanced protection for workers at Paducah was not implemented until 1992. This is an unbelievable and outrageous error. These workers deserve full compensation for the health effects of exposures that they were subject to without their knowledge. The third situation that this bill addresses occurred to 55 workers at the DOE's East Tennessee Technology Park, who also suffered exposures to radiation and hazardous materials that have resulted in occupational illness. Through this provision, DOE can make a grant of $100,000 to each worker, if medical experts find that it is appropriate. The Department of Energy, under Secretary Richardson's leadership, is facing up to some of its past failures to properly oversee worker health and safety at its facilities. It is a tragedy that we have to introduce and pass bills like this one, particularly in cases where it seems so clear that the problems could have been prevented. But this bill is the right thing to do for workers who served their country and expected that they would be kept safe from occupational injury. As the Congress considers this bill, I hope that we also remain vigilant to the ongoing challenges to worker safety and health at DOE facilities, particularly in the parts of the Department that are being reorganized as a result of legislation we passed earlier this year. I ask unanimous consent that a section-by-section analysis be printed in the Record.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I will vote against the Wellstone-Dorgan agribusiness merger moratorium because I believe the solution to this problem is not a temporary moratorium. Instead, the Department of Justice should enforce the anti-trust laws that now exist to prevent the problems arising from industry concentration. That's why, last February, I signed a letter to the President, along with 22 of my colleagues, urging the administration to conduct a full-scale detailed examination of the impacts of market concentration on our nation's family farmers and ranchers. We requested that the study be completed within six months and the findings reported to Congress. We have yet to receive that study. I will continue to press the Department of Justice to exercise particular diligence in reviewing proposed mergers or acquisitions involving major agribusiness firms. Our family farmers and ranchers need and deserve our full support. I have worked hard to provide emergency funding in times of natural disaster, and to address the economic disasters created by trade and world economic conditions. I am working to reform the federal crop insurance program to address the needs of specialty crop producers. And I will continue to advocate for full adherence to existing anti-trust laws, and the procedures for investigating market concentration in agriculture.