Jeff Bingaman

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I prefer that.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Let me ask the Senator from Washington if it is appropriate to ask unanimous consent for 4 minutes in between to explain my amendment; he could have 2.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I am. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Hawaii, Senator Inouye, be listed as a cosponsor of my amendment. I understand the yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, let me take a few minutes to respond to the comments of the Senator. Let me give my perspective on where we find ourselves, because I think it is important to always identify the context. In my view, the budget resolution that was approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives has in it a very misguided set of priorities, and that is part of what is driving us to debate cuts within this Interior appropriations bill at this point. We are seeing that we have a bill coming up again tomorrow on defense matters, where we are proposing, under that budget resolution, to add $7 billion to what the President has asked for and to what the Pentagon has asked for, primarily to fund Member-interest items, which is usually referred to in the public arena as ``pork,'' at the same time that we are cutting funds for Indian education throughout this country. So we have a very misguided set of priorities that have driven us to the situation that we find ourselves in today. For that reason, of course, I oppose that budget resolution. Let me say that even within this bill I have great difficulty relating to the characterization that my colleague and friend from Washington made that the Indian students in this country are doubly privileged by getting impact aid funds plus other types of funds. The impact aid funds are clearly intended to make up for the loss of the local tax base. That is what that is. That is not free money. That is a result of the fact that local communities have no ability to tax locally, and, therefore, the Federal Government has said we will provide some level of assistance to offset the loss of revenue from the loss of that tax base. The truth is that the Indian students in my State--at least, when I go around and visit schools, those schools are not luxurious; those are large classes, and those students do not have any kind of special privileges by virtue of being Indian students. A principal of one of the schools in Gallup County came to see me-- Karen Woods from Jefferson Elementary in Gallup-McKinley County. She said to me--and I think this is her perspective in trying to prepare for the new school year which will begin later this month--what she is facing is cuts in support for kindergarten. She is having to go from a full day down to a half day. There are cuts in counselors from the elementary school, cuts in bilingual education and funds for tutors, and cuts in chapter 1. She will have lost the first grade side-by-side program, as she explained it to me. Summer school for elementary students has been lost. Home school liaison program, which she had before, has been lost. Now we are proposing in this bill that the funds which she might have applied for to supplement public school funds to assist the Indian students, in particular, which the various tribes could have applied for, will also be cut. So I think it represents a very misguided set of priorities. I hope very much that we can do this. I wish we did not have to take a 2 percent reduction in the other accounts in this bill in order to at least maintain level funding for this year in this vitally important program. But that is the only way that I can figure out how to do it. I think, on balance, that is the right set of priorities. On balance, we should be putting our children first and putting the education of our children first. I think our obligation in the Federal Government is nowhere greater than in the education of the Indian children in this country. For that reason, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and vote for it when we come to a final vote.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I would desire a rollcall. I would like a few minutes to respond.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, this amendment will restore $26.6 million for Indian education programs that are funded on a competitive basis through the Department of Education's Office of Indian Education. Under the amendment, the office's programs would be maintained in 1996 at the 1995 level of $81 million. The committee has appropriated and has contained in this bill $54 million for this purpose already. And I appreciate that very much, but I do want my colleagues to know that this level of funding would represent more than a 30-percent cut from the current-year level. It would represent the complete elimination of the office's competitive grant program which specifically awards funding to Indian tribes and tribal organizations that work with the public schools and the community on a variety of education issues. This funding is vitally needed because it supplements but it does not directly fund our Nation's public schools; and those are the schools, Mr. President, which educate 90 percent of our American Indian children. Without the amendment and the restoration of the competitive grant program, we will be eliminating special services for Indian students in public schools. We will be eliminating training for their teachers and critically needed adult education and GED programs that are operated by Indian tribes and Indian people. Mr. President, this is not fluff money. This is funding that is awarded on a highly competitive basis. It does not even come close to meeting the actual need which has been demonstrated. In 1990 to 1994 this Office of Indian Education received a total of $75 million in competitive funding requests from Indian tribes and Indian organizations. It was able to fund less than 50 percent of the requests it received during that 4-year period. Only the programs of the highest quality were funded due to the very competitive nature of these grants. I want to make sure that my colleagues understand this, that I am not offering an amendment that would allocate money out to school districts on a formula basis. The funding that is involved with this amendment is specifically designed to keep the Indian tribes and Indian people involved in the education of their own children, in the education of their own young people and the adults in those tribes and Indian organizations. Mr. President, I have heard many speeches on this Senate floor about empowering people to do things for themselves. These funds that we are trying to restore in this amendment empower Indian tribes and Indian people to take a hand in educating their own children. That is the specific purpose of these funds. And it is for that reason that I believe it is important that we maintain the current level of funding. As I mentioned earlier, the funds enable tribes to operate GED classes and other adult education classes. It helps to train the teachers who will teach these Indian students. It provides fellowships and grants to Indian students who wish to pursue higher education and through a specific set-aside it funds several Indian control schools including schools in Wisconsin and in Minnesota and in the Dakotas. Last year Indian-controlled schools in Minnesota received $1 and $2 million in competitive grant funding. That is two different schools in Minnesota. Unless the amendment that I am offering here is approved, these schools will not even have the opportunity to apply for funding in the upcoming year. They will get nothing because there will be no program through which we can fund them. Mr. President, there are many types of programs funded under this program. Let me give a few examples. The Yaqui tribe in Arizona has a program for curriculum development for dropout prevention, for support systems, for students in those schools. In Washington State, the South Puget Intertribal Planning and Seattle Indian Center has a dropout intervention and GED program. That is funded through these funds. In Alaska the Bristol Bay Native American Corps has a dropout and counseling and testing center that they fund. In Oklahoma there is a Cross Cultural Education Center that provides basic skills, classes and dropout prevention programs for Indian students. In my own State, the Pueblo Zuni have programs in basic academic skills, enhancement and dropout prevention. New Mexico State University in the past has had a summer program for Indian youth in science and math which is funded through the funds that I am proposing to maintain with this amendment. In Wyoming, there is the Northern Plains Education Foundation, also a dropout prevention program that they have there. In Nevada, we have the Fallen Pauite Shoshoni Tribe and the Pyramid Lake Pauite Tribe. They have the basic skills and dropout prevention program as well. Mr. President, my Indian constituents recently reminded me that the very first contract with America was between the Federal Government and the Indian people of this country. In school districts such as the Gallop-McKinley school district in my State of New Mexico, Indian students need the services that this appropriation provides, and the school district serving them relies upon these Federal funds. These funds provide the services that enhance the cultural relevance and success of mainstream public education for students. They empower the Indian tribes and Indian people to remain involved in the education of their own children, even when these children are in public schools. We ought not to be cutting programs that are essential for the very neediest in our society, and unless we adopt this amendment, that is exactly what we would be doing in this bill. Mr. President, I think there are going to be many examples this year--we have already seen a few and we will see more when we come back from our August recess--where we are proposing to cut funding for education. As I go around my State of New Mexico and talk to people, that is not the priority that the people of my State have. They want us to maintain funding for education. In fact, if there is any additional funding to be used, they want it added to education. Ninety percent of the Indian students in my State and in the country, in fact, get their education through the public schools, and the funds that are involved in this program are the funds that are helping those public schools to provide better education and are helping the Indian organizations and the tribal governments to participate in that. Last Sunday, on July 30, Louis Gerstner, the CEO of IBM, told the Governors in their meeting in Vermont that America's top priorities should be setting ``absolutely the highest academic standards and holding all of us accountable for results. Now. Immediately. This school year.'' He went on to say, ``Now if we don't do that, we won't need anymore goals, because we are going nowhere. Without standards and accountability, we have nothing.'' Mr. President, I compliment Mr. Gerstner for his strong commitment to improving education. We need to demonstrate that same commitment in the U.S. Senate. This amendment will help us to do that. The offset that I have identified in this amendment and which I am sure is not ideal, since no offset is ideal, but it is the least painful of those that I come up with, essentially involves a 2 percent prorated reduction in funding for all other accounts covered by this bill. With that kind of a 2-percent reduction on a prorated basis, we can have the necessary $26 million which is necessary to keep funding in 1996 at the same level that we have it in 1995 for these very important programs that help to educate Indian children in this country. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. I yield the floor, Mr. President. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and that I be allowed to offer an amendment at this time.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. I am glad to respond to any questions anyone has about this, if there is any confusion about the purpose of my amendment. It is an amendment I know several Senators support. Perhaps some of them would like to speak. I know the Senator from Vermont had indicated he wanted to speak briefly in favor of the amendment. Perhaps--in order to ensure that he has that opportunity, at least for a few moments here, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I will not belabor the issue but I would like to explain this. I have the cosponsorship of Senator Pell and also Senator Simon for the amendment. Mr. President, I rise today to offer an amendment to H.R. 1977 that would expand the category of individual fellowships that could be awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts to include National Heritage Fellowship Awards and American Jazz Masters Awards. Under the bill reported by committee, only literature individual grants could be awarded. This amendment provides no new funding--the NEA would have to pay for these honorific fellowships out of existing funds. Mr. President, the fellowships I am seeking to restore, out of existing funding for the NEA in the bill, are given in recognition of outstanding achievement in the folk arts and in jazz music. An individual cannot apply for these awards; he or she must be nominated. To the best of my knowledge, these awards have generated absolutely no controversy at any time. They have, however, generated great and well- deserved pride for those receiving them, and have done much to preserve the folk and traditional art and jazz music that distinguish our great nation. To give some flavor of the artists recognized by these awards, I can share with my colleagues some of the artists recognized by the National Heritage Fellowship Program this year. They include Mary Holiday Black, a Navajo basket weaver, Robert Lockwood, Jr., an African-American blues guitarist, Donny Golden, an Irish-American step dancer, and Buck Ramsey, a cowboy poet and singer from Amarillo, TX. Jazz artists recognized this year include Ray Brown, Roy Haynes, and Horace Silver. Each of these artists is a part of our diverse and truly wonderful American cultural heritage, and all are worthy of our recognition. By recognizing these artists, we also gain the opportunity to appreciate our diversity, and the unifying effect this appreciation can have on our Nation. I think it is worth noting that we are not the only nation that recognizes its masters of traditional art forms. In fact, the fellowships I seek to restore are sometimes called National Treasure Awards because they resemble the Living National Treasures awards given in Japan. I am told that those awards in Japan are in fact richer awards, providing annual stipends for life. Our awards, by contrast, provide one-time awards of $10,000-$20,000. Although the financial award is often very important to the traditional artists and musicians receiving them, at least as important is the recognition that their art is cherished by our Nation. This national recognition simply cannot be recreated by the States, and for that reason, I believe that we must allow the NEA to continue these important programs. In closing, I would like to quote one of the several New Mexicans who have received a National Heritage Fellowship. Upon receiving his award during the Reagan administration, the great Santos woodcarver George Lopez noted, ``I receive this, but it is for all those who came before me and made a lesson for all of us with their lives.'' Mr. President, let me just elaborate a little bit on each of these categories to make the point a little more clearly for my colleagues. The idea of these awards is to pick out a very few artists toward the end of their career, artists who provide a positive vision for what can be done and what can be preserved that is great in our culture and our heritage. The recipients this year come from a variety of States--from New York, Utah, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Alaska, California, Ohio, Florida, South Dakota, and Texas. All of these recipients are deserving recipients. By giving them these National Heritage Fellowship Awards, we are acknowledging them for their work as teachers, their work as role models, mentors, or innovators. Each artist receives a one-time stipend, as I indicated. Let me say a couple of words about the Jazz Masters Award. There have been many great jazz artists in the history of our country who have received this award in recent years: Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Bellson, Art Blakey, Sarah Vaughan, and Lionel Hampton are examples that I think all Members of this body will recognize. The present practice of the National Endowment for the Arts is to make awards to somewhere between 3 and 5 individuals each year under the Jazz Masters Awards, to make awards to 12 individuals each year under the National Heritage Award. As I said at the very beginning of my discussion, this is not an amendment to add money to the National Endowment for the Arts budget. All this amendment is, Mr. President, is a granting of authority for the National Endowment for the Arts to continue with these very valuable, very important programs which we have all recognized over the years. I point out to my colleagues and remind them that each year, here in the Senate, we have a reception at which we recognize and acknowledge and congratulate the winners of these National Heritage Fellowship Awards. So I think it would be highly misguided for this body at this time to approve legislation that prohibits the National Endowment for the Arts from going forward and maintaining this tradition that they have begun, which I think is so important to our country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a full list of the National Heritage Fellowship Award winners, by State.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to offer an amendment to H.R. 2020. My amendment is a modest one, and it is identical to one accepted by the Senate 2 years ago as an amendment to the fiscal year 1994 appropriations bill for the Treasury Department, Postal Service and General Government. This amendment would ban tobacco vending machines in Federal buildings and on Federal property accessible to children. I am reoffering my amendment for three simple reasons: First, in 1993, after the Senate passed my amendment to ban tobacco vending machines on Federal property, the conferees failed to retain the legislative language, opting instead for the following statement in the fiscal year 1994 Treasury-Postal Appropriations Conference Report: ``* * * [elimination of the provision] does not signal a lack of concern for the health and safety of minors. The conferees agree that locating cigarette sales vending machines in areas accessible to minors poses a serious problem as their presence increases the availability of products which otherwise may be prohibited from sale to minors. Therefore, the conferees direct the Administrator to eliminate vending machines in areas which are accessible to minors.'' Despite this directive, tobacco vending machines remain on Federal property and many are fully accessible to children. Second, more substantively, vending machines are extremely difficult to monitor. Not surprisingly, they are one of the chief sources of cigarette purchases among children and teenagers. Third, finally, every State in the country has enacted a law to prohibit the sale or distribution of cigarettes to minors. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments to talk about each of the points I have listed. As I mentioned, the congressional directive contained in the fiscal year 1994 Treasury-Postal Service appropriations bill was issued almost 2 years ago. In those 2 years, more than 2 million children and teens in this country took up smoking. One-third of them--more than 600,000 children--will later die of tobacco-related causes. Let me repeat that: More than 600,000 children will die because sometime over the past 2 years, they started to smoke. And we cannot even get a few cigarette vending machines out of some Federal buildings. Mr. President, these statistics are not exaggerations. The facts are well known and widely acknowledged: First, more than 420,000 people died each year from tobacco-related causes, making cigarette smoking the single most preventable cause of death and disability in the United States. Second, every day, more than 3,000 children and teenagers start to smoke. More than two-thirds of all adult smokers had their first cigarette before the age of 14, and 90 percent began smoking by age 18. Third, every year, minors consume 516 million packs of cigarettes, at least half of which are sold illegally to children and teens. Five hundred-sixteen million packs of cigarettes consumed by minors annually. Three thousand children starting to smoke every day. And every State in this country has a law prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to minors. Clearly, something is not working. It is time for a new course of action. Some experts argue that the wisest, most effective course of action would be to take the tobacco industry up on its voluntary plan for reducing underage smoking and try to hold the industry to its commitment. Others argue that we should use this opportunity to give the Food and Drug Administration broader regulatory authority of tobacco products. The President is currently grappling with these tough issues, and we expect an announcement of his decision at any time. For several years, I have sponsored legislation that would specifically give the FDA the authority to regulate nicotine-containing tobacco products. For a number of years, the Department of Health and Human Services has urged States and localities to take greater responsibility by, among other things, banning cigarette vending machines. In recent years, other Federal officials, including President Clinton and former President Bush, have joined the Department's appeal to States and localities. In its Healthy People 2000 Report, the Public Health Service encourages Indian Tribal Councils to ``similarly enforce prohibitions of tobacco sales to Indian youth living on reservations'' because Indian nations are sovereign and exempted from State laws. I agree with the Department's previous advice. I sincerely hope that over the next few days or weeks the President will take a tough stand on the issue of Federal regulation of tobacco products. I hope he will go much farther than this modest bill. At the same time, I would caution the President and my colleagues in the Senate not to forget the powerful message that ``leading by example'' can convey. Mr. President, over the past several years, while the Federal Government has been urging every political body in the country to ban cigarette vending machines, pack after pack are loaded into--and purchased out of--vending machines every day in Federal buildings. Those buildings include the Senate and House Office Buildings and the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House. It is long past time for the vending machines to go. It is time for the Federal Government to lead by example. I believe that if we expect States, localities, Indian Tribal leaders, schools, parents, and even the tobacco industry itself, to take steps to protect our children from tobacco, then we in the Federal Government should join the effort. We should lead the effort. We can begin with passage of this amendment. Thank you. amendment no. 2240 Mr. SHELBY offered an amendment (No. 2240) for Mr. Brown: At the appropriate place in the bill, insert the following new section: Sec. . It is the sense of the Senate that the General Services Administration should increase use of direct delivery for high-dollar value supplies and only stock items that are profitable, that after these changes are implemented, the General Services Administration should phase out the supply depots that are no longer economically justifiable or needed.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I do not want to take much of the Senate's time this morning, but I would like to make a couple of points in support of the committee amendment to strike certain provisions of the House-passed bill. If we must have this debate, I believe it is appropriate that we have it today, Saturday. Having the debate on the weekend will give more of the 1.2 million women who work for the Federal Government the opportunity to hear this discussion. As women listen to this debate, I hope they are as disappointed and disgusted with it as I am. This debate strikes me as the height of arrogance. We are here today, in our great benevolence, to decide which fundamental rights and what health benefits will be available to the 1.2 million women who work for the Federal Government. Mr. President, there should not even be a debatable question here. Whether my colleagues on the other side like it or not, the Supreme Court has spoken: Women in this country have the fundamental right to choose. The law, the right, and the privilege are clear. Whether or not to exercise that right is a personal decision. It is a decision to be made by a woman and her doctor, not by a group of 90 or so men in the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, women who work for the Federal Government pay nearly 30 percent of their health care premiums. This is more than most workers in the private sector pay, when an employer agrees to provide health care coverage. In neither cases, the private or public sector, is health insurance coverage a fringe benefit. Health care coverage is part of an employee's compensation for service rendered to the employer; and for the past 2 years, Federal employees, like most workers in the private sector, have had the option of choosing a health plan that covers the full range of reproductive health services, including abortion. Are we going to reverse this policy today? Are we going to issue a Draconian mandate, for purely political reasons, that applies only to women who work for the Postal Service, the Justice Department, the National Park Service, the Department of Labor, and the other branches of the Federal Government? For these women, are we in the Congress going to decide that reproductive health services includes every other health service except abortion? Are we saying to these women ``Sure, come work for the Federal Government. Devote yourself to public service--but don't forget to check your constitutional rights at the door.'' That is what this debate is about. It is an attempt by anti-choice Members of the Congress, who have failed to make abortion illegal, to make the fundamental right to choose more difficult, more expensive, and more dangerous. Mr. President, this is just the first step. Today it is the hard working women in the Federal Government. Next, it will be Medicaid recipients and American Indian women who depend on the Indian Health Service for their health care. Then it will be family planning services, which millions of women and girls depend upon. And on and on and on, until the goal of the radical right is realized and abortion is made illegal. This is the road we are on. Each Member of this body should understand this, and every woman in America should understand this. Whose marching orders will we follow? Will we follow the extreme political agenda of the radical right, or will we follow the Constitution, as affirmed by the Supreme Court more than 20 years ago in Roe versus Wade? The Members of the House have already made their decision. They opted for the radical right. I sincerely hope my colleagues in the Senate have the wisdom to choose the other course. We should uphold the Constitution. We should respect the fundamental right of every woman to reproductive choice, regardless of where she is employed, or whether she is employed. We should get out of this ridiculous business of micromanaging the lives and choices of hard- working Americans. And we should reject this blatant attempt to discriminate against women who work for the Federal Government and rob them of their fundamental right to choose.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, it is my understanding, and I ask the Senator from Nebraska and the Senator from South Carolina if they agree with this, that during this period that has just been identified, we would be able to speak on the underlying amendment or on the Exon amendment or on both, and the statement I intend to give would be a statement on both, starting, of course, with a description of the Thurmond amendment and my reason for sponsoring it, and also discussing my reason for supporting the amendment of the Senator from Nebraska.

Mr. BINGAMAN. If I may ask the Senator from Nebraska, I hoped to have about 15 minutes before the end of the debate. May I take all that time at this point?

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the statement by the Senator from Nebraska, and also the statement by my colleague from New Mexico. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor of the Thurmond amendment and of the Exon second-degree amendment to it. I would first like to explain to my colleagues why the Thurmond amendment is an enormous improvement over the DOE provisions currently in the bill. There are three exceptions and they are being dealt with in the second-degree amendments being proposed by Senators Exon, Reid, and McCain. I will support all of those amendments as well. When we debated this bill in committee, I raised numerous objections to the DOE provisions. I expressed the view that these provisions took a series of extreme positions for which there was no support in the hearing record of the committee. My objections were summarized in the dissenting views I filed in the committee's report. I am pleased to report to my colleagues that the Thurmond substitute amendment has now corrected most of the numerous problems I identified and several that were subsequently identified by the executive branch. Let me highlight the most significant changes: I had criticized the tritium production and plutonium disposition provisions because they would have prejudged ongoing programmatic environmental impact statements by favoring a multipurpose reactor approach--the least likely approach to come out of these studies. The Thurmond amendment is now neutral on the technical choice. It appropriately funds work on tritium targets, work that DOE under Secretary Curtis told us in the Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing on May 16 would be required under all options. Unfortunately, while backing off from making a technical choice on tritium production, the Thurmond amendment now contains a provision mandating that any new tritium production facility be sited at Savannah River. It is that provision which Senator Reid is seeking to strike because it obviously disadvantages the Nevada test site in the ongoing environmental impact statement process. The tritium language also makes $10 million available to a university consortium for plutonium research. Senator McCain will seek to ensure that any money spent for university research in this area is competitively awarded. This is a long-standing policy of the Armed Services Committee at least since Senator Tower was chairman. The second area that was problematic in the original bill was a series of provisions--sections 3134, 3163, and 3166--and a $344 million funding add-on aimed at sizing a nuclear weapons manufacturing complex at cold war levels when far more cost-effective alternatives are being developed in the stockpile stewardship and management programmatic environmental impact statement process. Those provisions are entirely reworked in the Thurmond amendment and the funding for stockpile management has been reduced $215 million. There is now no mandate to rebuild production capacity to cold war levels. What is left in the bill is consistent with the ongoing programmatic environmental impact statement process on stockpile stewardship and management. The third problem in the original bill had to do with laboratory management and funding. Senator Domenici referred to this. The original bill contained a provision, section 3139, barring the laboratories from using defense program funds for laboratory-directed basic research, the lifeblood of the laboratories, and for science education. The bill also cut requested funding for dual-use technology partnerships with industry by $249 million. The Thurmond amendment deletes the prohibition on use of defense funds for lab-directed basic research and science education, restores $239 million for the stockpile stewardship technology partnership [[Page S 11356]] and education programs and includes a provision that all of these programs must support national security requirements. The fourth problem in the original bill involved a severe cut in requested funding for nonproliferation and arms control verification program--a total of $78 million. This would have very seriously damaged the national laboratories' programs in critical areas and slowed the effort to bring Russian nuclear weapons facilities under better security and safeguards. The Thurmond amendment restores all of that funding. The fifth problem in the original bill involved provisions, sections 3137 and 3138, which would have put the Department of Energy's defense facilities outside the purview of the National Environmental Policy Act and raised a constitutional separation of powers issue according to the Secretary of Energy, who opposed them. The Thurmond amendment deletes those provisions. Finally, the original bill included a provision, section 3167, that, according to the statement of administration policy on this bill, would have prohibited international inspections of DOE facilities under the terms of the treaty between the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Thurmond amendment deletes this provision, which I know Senator Pell was very concerned about. This rewrite of the DOE provisions marks a significant improvement in this bill as a whole. It brings this bill into alignment with the energy and water appropriations bill passed on Tuesday evening and with the administration's request with only modest changes. I commend my senior colleagues from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, for his central role in helping to bring about this result. He did yeoman work on convincing the members of the Armed Services Committee on his side to accept these changes. I also commend him for producing in his role as chairman of the subcommittee the excellent defense section of the energy and water appropriations bill passed on Tuesday. Mr. President, there are still, however three problems with the Thurmond amendment. I have already mentioned the Reid and McCain amendments. Let me now turn to the amendment being offered by Senator Exon. Senator Exon is seeking to strike a provision in the Thurmond amendment, which was also in the underlying bill. The provision sets aside $50 million to prepare for hydronuclear testing. The administration did not request funds to carry out hydronuclear tests in fiscal year 1996. These are tests with a low yield, usually measured in pounds of TNT, which provide information about the ignition of the primary of a nuclear weapon. These are expensive tests to conduct, approximately the same as for a nuclear weapons test--on the order of $10 to $20 million per test. The administration's policy in the ongoing Comprehensive Test Ban negotiations is to limit such tests to a yield of four pounds of TNT. The administration is not opposed in principle to such testing, but the technical experts have not found tests which are worth doing. A 1994 summer study by a JASON task force, chaired by Sid Drell of Stanford University, has recommended against hydronuclear testing. The JASON's are a group of the Nation's foremost scientists who under the aegis of the Mitre Corp. advise DOD and DOE on technical matters. They wrote: The very limited added value of hydronuclear tests that provide for a brief glimpse into the very early stages of critically have to be weighed against costs, and against the impact of continuing an underground testing program at the Nevada Test Site on U.S. nonproliferation goals. On balance we oppose hydronuclear testing. Mr. President, this is frankly a highly complex matter. The bottom line for me is that the nuclear weapon stewards in the Department are not crying out for hydronuclear tests within their limited budgets. The best minds in the scientific community on balance do not support them. If a specific problem arises that would require a hydronuclear test to resolve, I believe that the administration would request the funds and the test would be conducted within the 4 pound limit the President has set. But the bill before us and the Thurmond amendment insist on spending $50 million to prepare for hydronuclear tests with no specific purpose in mind. I attended the May 16 Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearings on the weapons program and I can recall no witness from the laboratories or DOE or the Pentagon demanding such test preparations. Mr. President, we can not afford to spend money unwisely when we are fighting to bring our deficit under control. I urge my colleagues to support Senator Exon's amendment. To summarize, Mr. President, I am cosponsoring the Thurmond amendment because it is an enormous improvement in six different areas over the existing bill language. I also support all three efforts to further improve the language in the Thurmond amendment.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate that updated information. I think that is one additional improvement in the Thurmond amendment and I, as I say, commend my colleague and others who have worked hard to put this amendment together. I hope we can pass it with an overwhelming vote. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Yes, I am glad to yield to my colleague from New Mexico.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the Kohl-Grassley amendment to cut $7 billion from this bill and bring it back to the level that was requested by the President. I opposed this bill when it was before the Armed Services Committee, in part because I did not support this additional funding. I did not feel that the committee had used the additional funds wisely, even if we decided to go ahead and add the funds. Taxpayers are demanding, as Senator Grassley just said, and others have said over many months in the Senate, that Congress reduce the Federal deficit. This has been the first priority in Washington since this Congress convened. Mr. President, the current bonanza of weapons system add-ons that is reflected in this bill cannot be sustained in future year budgets. The committee report admits that. Senator Kohl quoted the committee report in its entirety on this issue in his statement. Let me just repeat one sentence from that report. It says: The limited progress reflected in this bill cannot be maintained unless future funding is increased. Sixty Senators earlier this year voted not to increase defense spending above the President's budget during the next 7 years. A majority of the Armed Services Committee voted for the increase, and the committee is now straightforwardly telling the Senate that they have constructed a bill inconsistent with the budget resolution's funding levels in future years. They will be back for more funding in order to sustain the add-ons for various weapons systems and procurement initiatives in this bill. Mr. President, when they come back for that additional money, I strongly doubt that the Congress is going to add funding in future years for defense. Instead, we are going to face a choice between force structure and new weapons systems. We cannot have both within the budget resolution's outyear defense totals. The committee agrees that we cannot have both. Adequately paying and housing and training 1.45 million active duty service members in future years will require greater expenditures for personnel, military construction and operations and maintenance and will further squeeze the amount we have to pay for these weapons systems that we are starting to buy in this bill. Defense experts from both parties have pointed to the train wreck in defense budgets that we are going to face before the end of this decade. Let me just point out we had a very good hearing in the committee where we talked about this excess force structure. Two experts there, Dan Goure of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Andrew Krepinevich of the Defense Budget Project, both made the point that we had to reduce the force structure by somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 personnel. Richard Perle, who many people in this body know as a fairly strong supporter of our defense effort, has recently stated: We are spending too much on a force structure that is far larger than we need. Mr. President, I am tempted to offer an amendment directing the Secretary of Defense to prepare for an additional drawdown in the size of our force structure in light of the priority that is being accorded to weapons systems modernization in this bill, and also the fact that it is very unlikely that future defense budgets will have enough in it for both. I am not sure how I would vote on such an amendment, but I would be very interested in seeing how those who put this bill together would come down on that fundamental choice. George Wilson, who has long studied the defense issues in this country, wrote a very good article in Navy Times on August 7. Let me read a little bit from that article. In talking about the present activities in the defense budget, he says: It is going to end badly. The budget balancers in Congress and the executive branch, sooner or later, will conclude that the hawks on the House National Security and Senate Arms Services Committees and elsewhere in Congress have made themselves irrelevant. No later than 1997, the budget balancers will slash military programs right and left because, if for no other reason, this will be the easiest place to cut, barring a big war. Before the chaos from that budget train wreck sets in, there is the even more worrisome prospect that congressional hawks will succeed in their current efforts to put the country into a U-turn back toward the Cold War. Mr. President, yesterday, we dealt with the ``U-turn back toward the cold war'' and, by two votes, decided to make that U-turn back toward the cold war. Today, Senator Kohl and Senator Grassley are giving us a chance to ensure that the 1997 train wreck is not made worse by our spending binge this year. I hope the Senate will support the position it took back in May that additional funding is not needed. I hope we will not see headlines in tomorrow's Washington Post like we saw today: ``House Votes Major Cuts in Domestic Programs'' and ``Senate Backs Missile Defense Network.'' When we are slashing Medicare, slashing Head Start and education programs, slashing Medicaid for the poor [[Page S 11398]] and disabled, slashing environmental protection programs, I, for one, cannot justify the extra $7 billion in this bill for defense. I urge the Senate to support the Grassley-Kohl amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, 4 years ago, I introduced a bill to ban tobacco vending machines in Federal buildings and on Federal property accessible to children. Two years ago, I reintroduced the bill, and it passed the full Senate by voice vote as an amendment to the fiscal year 1994 Treasury-Postal Service appropriations bill. I rise today to reintroduce my bill for three simple reasons: First, in 1993, after the Senate passed my amendment to ban tobacco vending machines on Federal property, the conferees failed to retain the legislative language, opting instead for the following statement in the fiscal year 1994 Treasury-Postal appropriations conference report: . . . [elimination of the provision] does not signal a lack of concern for the health and safety of minors. The conferees agree that locating cigarette sales vending machines in areas accessible to minors poses a serious problem as their presence increases the availability of products which otherwise may be prohibited from sale to minors. Therefore, the conferees direct the Administrator to eliminate vending machines in areas which are accessible to minors. Despite this directive, tobacco vending machines remain on federal property and many are fully accessible to children. Second, more substantively, vending machines are extremely difficult to monitor. Not surprisingly, they are one of the chief sources of cigarette purchases among children and teenagers. Third, finally, every State in the country has enacted a law to prohibit the sale or distribution of cigarettes to minors. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments to talk about each of the points I have listed. As I mentioned, the congressional directive contained in the fiscal year 1994 Treasury-Postal Service appropriations bill was issued almost 2 years ago. In those 2 years, more than 2 million children and teens in this country took up smoking. One-third of them--more than 600,000 children--will later die of tobacco-related causes. Let me repeat that: more than 600,000 children will die because sometime over the past 2 years, they started to smoke. And we cannot even get a few cigarette vending machines out of some Federal buildings. Mr. President, these statistics are not exaggerations. The facts are well known and widely acknowledged: First, more than 420,000 people died each year from tobacco-related causes, making cigarette smoking the single most preventable cause of death and disability in the United States. Second, every day, more than 3,000 children and teenagers start to smoke. More than two-thirds of all adult smokers had their first cigarette before the age of 14, and 90 percent began smoking by age 18. Third, every year, minors consume 516 million packs of cigarettes, at least half of which are sold illegally to children and teens. Five hundred sixteen million packs of cigarettes consumed by minors annually. Three thousand children starting to smoke every day. And every State in this country has a law prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to minors. Clearly, something is not working. It is time for a new course of action. Some experts argue that the wisest, most effective course of action would be to take the tobacco industry up on its voluntary plan for reducing underage smoking and try to hold the industry to its commitment. Others argue that we should use this opportunity to give the Food and Drug Administration broader regulatory authority of tobacco products. The President is currently grappling with these tough issues, and we expect an announcement of his decision at any time. For several years, I have sponsored legislation that would specifically give the FDA the authority to regulate nicotine-containing tobacco products. For a number of years, the Department of Health and Human Services has urged States and localities to take greater responsibility by, among other things, banning cigarette vending machines. In recent years, other Federal officials, including President Clinton and former President Bush, have joined the Department's appeal to States and localities. In its Healthy People 2000 Report, the Public Health Service encourages Indian Tribal Councils to ``similarly enforce prohibitions of tobacco sales to Indian youth living on reservations'' because Indian nations are sovereign and exempted from State laws. I agree with the Department's previous advice. I sincerely hope that over the next few days or weeks the President will take a tough stand on the issue of Federal regulation of tobacco products. I hope he will go much farther than this modest bill. At the same time, I would caution the President and my colleagues in the Senate not to forget the powerful message that leading by example can convey. Mr. President, over that past several years, while the Federal Government has been urging every other political body in the country to ban cigarette vending machines, pack after pack are loaded into--and purchased out of--vending machines every day in Federal buildings. Those buildings include the Senate and House Office Buildings and the Old Executive Office Building, next door to the White House. It is long past time for the vending machines to go. It is time for the Federal Government to lead by example. I believe that if we expect States, localities, Indian Tribal leaders, schools, parents, and even the tobacco industry itself, to take steps to protect our children from tobacco, then we in the Federal Government should join the effort. We should lead the effort. We can begin with passage of this legislation, which I ask to be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. Thank you.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank the senior Senator from Arizona for his willingness to work with me on this amendment. This amendment basically puts every safeguard the Armed Services Committee staff or Senator McCain's staff or Senator Campbell's staff or my staff has come up with on the Elk Hills sale into the bill while remaining responsive to the mandate in the fiscal year 1996 concurrent budget resolution to sell the Elk Hills oil reserve in fiscal year 1996. As many of our colleagues know, the sale of the Nation's naval petroleum reserves was not initiated by the Armed Services Committee. The sale was initially recommended by the administration to take place over the next 2 years. The budget committees noted this and nevertheless decided to score the administration's proposal in such a way that the sale will have to take place during the coming fiscal year instead of over the next 2 years. Many of us on the Armed Services Committee have serious reservations about the pace of this sale. The National Academy of Public Administration has testified to serious concerns about selling the reserve in 1 year and about whether the taxpayers will get their money's worth if this sale is rushed. R. Scott Fosler, president of the National Academy of Public Administration, wrote Senator Thurmond on July 20 with his comments on the provision in the current bill. Let me cite the key paragraph in that letter: Every study of the management or privatization of Elk Hills has documented the complexity of the process of divestment. There are stubborn issues involving equity finalization, California claims, and the establishment of true values which are not likely to be disposed of in time to effect an advantageous sale in one year. We, therefore, believe that the most prudent and efficacious course would be (1) establish the corporation as a management structure, (2) direct the corporation to develop a plan to sell Elk Hills (and possibly other reserves) within two or three years after the activation of the operation. This approach would permit an orderly, well-managed divestment process and would help assure that the government received full value for the assets sold. Mr. President, this option or any other option which would not result in the sale of Elk Hills and other reserves in fiscal year 1996 is not available to the Armed Services Committee under the budget resolution. I regret that. We only can sell these assets once. We should do it the right way. The Budget Committee should not be making the choices as to both the policy on selling the asset and the timing of that sale. So I support this amendment. It is the best we can do under current reconciliation instructions. Indeed it probably goes to the limit of those instructions and I commend the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Colorado for doing that. But I will continue to question those instructions and urge that the Armed Services Committee seek the flexibility from the Budget Committee that would allow the Secretary of Energy to dispose of these fields in the way that will bring maximum benefit to the taxpayers, the current owners of these assets. When the Armed Services Committee discusses reconciliation next month, perhaps we can offer two options to the Budget Committee, the provision we are adopting today which meets their mandate to sell the reserve in 1 year and a second provision that would allow the Secretary to sell it over a more extended time period. Mr. President, this sale involves the 10th largest oil field in the Nation. Each year this oil field provides approximately $400 million into the public treasury. This is a very significant sale. Mr. President, I have been told that there are many uncertainties about this sale that would make a potential bidder very cautious. The exact share of the field which the Government owns and which Chevron owns is in question. The amount of oil in the field is in question. The State of California has a suit in the courts regarding that State's interest in the field. For all of these reasons, Mr. President, Senator McCain and I and others placed a number of safeguards into this legislation that protect the interests of the taxpayers when it was before the Armed Services Committee. This amendment, which is sponsored by Senators McCain, Campbell, and myself adds even further safeguards to ensure that we get a fair price in any sales that may take place of Elk Hills or its components if the Secretary chooses to sell the field in parcels. This amendment gives the Secretary of Energy the authority to stop the sale and report to the Congress if the sale is turning out to be a bad deal. It gives the Secretary the authority to recommend alternatives to the sale if the sale is turning out to be a giveaway. The amendment also sets up similar procedures for the sale of the oil shale reserves. Finally, Mr. President, this amendment contains several provisions to streamline the sale which have been requested by the Department of Energy to allow the sale to proceed as closely as possible to the schedule mandated by the Budget Committee. Mr. President, in conclusion, I wish to commend Senator McCain again for his effort to make the best of this situation. Decisions were made for his Readiness Subcommittee by the Budget Committee. He now has to implement those decisions and the provision in our bill as reported and the improvements being made today by this amendment represent his and the committee as a whole's best effort to do that given the information we had available in late June and now in early August. The Armed Services Committee does not normally deal with selling Government assets and certainly we are not experts in oil field transactions. We have produced a provision that I believe is a significant improvement on the provision in the House version of this bill. And perhaps with the help of the budget committees, we will be able to improve it further in conference on this bill or in the reconciliation bill where this matter will also be dealt with. Mr. President, I urge the adoption of the amendment.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Madam President, I opposed this bill when it was being considered in the Armed Services Committee. The main reason I did so were the [[Page S 11263]] provisions in the bill entitled the Missile Defense Act of 1995. I believe these provisions will do this Nation's security more harm than good, by ensuring that START II will not be ratified by the Russian Duma. Madam President, I am not going to repeat the analysis which Senator Levin, Senator Nunn, Senator Exon, Senator Kerry, and various others have already made about the specific provisions that the Levin amendment would strike. They are clearly the most provocative of the provisions on missile defense that the bill contains and the ones that are most certain to incite the Russians to react. I would like, however, to ask my colleagues how we, here in this Senate, would react if the Russian Duma passed a defense bill that contained the following provisions: First, how would we react if the Russians adopted a provision that committed Russia to deploy a multisite antiballistic missile defense by the year 2003, with an interim capability by the year 1999, which constituted an anticipatory breach of the ABM Treaty and that added hundreds of millions of dollars in ruble equivalence in order to pursue that goal. How would we react here in this Senate if the Russians adopted a provision that revived a space-based missile defense program, in the hope that it would allow Russia to dominate space in the long run, while providing a second layer of missile defense for that country? How would we react here in this Senate if the Russians adopted a provision that unilaterally resolved the theater missile defense demarcation line at a point that would clearly make the American theater missile defense systems beyond Patriot violations of the ABM Treaty in Russia's view? How would we react here in this Senate if the Russian Duma adopted a provision that limited President Yeltsin's ability to retire strategic weapons systems before START II is ratified by the U.S. Senate? Finally, how would we react in this body if the Russians adopted a provision that proposed to resume hydronuclear testing with yields up to hundreds of tons of TNT, which is a level that is not usually associated with the term hydronuclear. Madam President, if that bill were to pass the Russian Duma, the din on this floor would be deafening. Member after Member would stand up and declare that the right wing had won the internal political controversy in Russia, that the cold war was back on, and that in light of this deeply provocative attack by the Russian Duma, ratification of the START II Treaty was out of the question. I am certain that at least 34 Senators here would dispatch a letter to the President declaring their opposition to START II, and demanding a defense supplemental bill be submitted to the Congress so we could react to what has happened. Now, of course, if we do this sort of thing, in this defense bill that we are now considering on the floor, I presume the expectation is that the Russians would not be similarly provoked. Madam President, I do not buy that assumption. The one thing that the Russian industrial base could effectively compete with us on is fabricating nuclear weapons and missiles. Some of that base is in the Ukraine and would have to be revived in Russia. I, for one, do not want to take the chance that the extreme provisions in this bill will reignite the arms race. I, for one, do not want to subscribe it a double standard in our dealings with the Russians, now that the cold war is over. The extreme and provocative actions by our so-called ``conservatives'' in this bill, in my view, will undoubtedly play into the hands of those who consider themselves conservative from a Russian perspective--those, in many cases, in Russia at least, who are bent on unraveling START II and other arms control efforts. The only thing that is attempting to be conserved by this transnational alliance would be the cold war. Madam President, I urge my colleagues, as many others have this afternoon, to support Senator Levin's effort to strike the most extreme provisions of this bill. If they are not struck, I trust that the President would veto the bill. I hope that is not necessary. I hope that we can act appropriately on this amendment and this bill can be improved to an extent that the President could sign it. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate those responses, and I yield the floor. Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, can I pose one additional question to the Senator from Georgia? Senator Exon, Senator Glenn, Senator Levin, and myself intend to offer an amendment at some stage to strike various of the provisions that are contained in this bill at the present time, particularly the ones under subtitle C on missile defense. I think that striking those is totally consistent with the letter we have received from Secretary Perry. As the Senator from Georgia sees this Kyl amendment, it would not be inconsistent for a person to support the Kyl amendment and still vote to strike those provisions relative to missile defense when that amendment comes up?

Mr. BINGAMAN

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I just wanted to clarify, if I could, exactly what the amendment is and then make a short statement. Am I correct, if I could address a question to the chairman or ranking member, either one, this amendment brings up the amount of funds authorized for military construction to the level that we decided to appropriate to last week in the appropriations bill? Is that essentially what is being done here?