Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise today, along with Senators Chafee, Hollings, Boxer, Torricelli, and Wellstone, to introduce the Telephone Privacy Act of 1998. The issue of telephone privacy thrusts itself into the news every so often. I have introduced similar legislation twice before, because these concerns have been with us since Alexander Graham Bell installed the first party line. In the early '80s Charles Wick was the head of USIA. He freely admitted that he had recorded more than eighty conversations with then President Reagan and former President Carter, cabinet members and many others. None of those people knew that Mr. Wick had recorded their conversations. I was absolutely appalled to learn that such conduct is perfectly legal. I have been trying to correct that gap in the law ever since. Usually, we hear about this issue after some incident where an unsuspecting person has suffered harsh personal consequences after a private conversation has been recorded and disseminated. The Speaker of the House himself was recently recorded by a third party while speaking on a cellular phone. If that call had been made on an ordinary phone, any party to the call could have recorded it without informing the Speaker or anyone else--and it would have been perfectly legal. He could have broadcast it on the evening news and published the transcript in the New York Times. This should be repugnant to almost everyone and yet it is all quite legal. My two previous efforts to make such conduct illegal failed. I believe that in the present environment a majority of our people think it is time to correct this abomination. Sixteen states have outlawed the taping of phone conversations without the consent of all parties to the call, but the federal law has not caught up with those states. Until a bill like mine becomes law, recording of personal conversations will be legal, so long as one party to the conversation is aware of such recording. How many Americans are aware that it is legal for the private telephone conversations of any person in this country to be monitored and even recorded without his or her consent? Indeed, how many Senators know? Americans cherish their privacy as nothing else. One of the reasons the President's popularity is so high is people believe his privacy and the First Lady's privacy has been unfairly invaded. How many times have we heard a recording on television or read a transcript in the newspaper where one of the parties makes some embarrassing revelation, confident that the conversation is ``private,'' never suspecting that he or she was being recorded? I am not talking about authorized law enforcement surveillance. I'm not talking about calls to 911. I'm not talking about employers who must monitor calls made by employees in the course of their duties and my bill makes no change in the law regarding Caller ID technologies. My bill would also allow victims of phone threats to record threatening calls. This bill retains all of the existing exceptions to the law that allow our law enforcement agencies and intelligence gathering agencies to carry out their important duties unimpeded. I want to emphasize that the only change this bill is intended to make to the status quo is this: subject to existing exceptions, under my bill, the interception of wire and electronic communications will be permitted only where all parties have consented, rather than allowing only one party to make that determination. Existing penalties for violations of the law will remain unchanged. The current law leaves a huge hole in the rights of telephone users. We have tolerated that gap for many years, but those have been years in which communications technology has exploded. In 1998, the technology to intercept and record telephone calls and other wire communications is available to almost everyone--you can do it with an ordinary answering machine. Much of our lives is now conducted over the telephone. Too much of our privacy is at risk. Too much mischief can be made to allow this flaw in our right to privacy any longer. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the Coverdell bill. Let me start by saying that I served on the school board of Charleston, AR, population 1,200, for 12 years before I ran for Governor of my State. I have often said--not entirely facetiously--that I ran for Governor to get off the school board because that is the worst job I ever had. It was a poor school district. When we asked the people of that district, though, for millage increases to build new facilities, not one single time, in my memory--not just the 12 years I served on the school board--did the people ever defeat a millage increase to improve the plight of our students. That situation still exists. The reason it was so difficult is because salaries were pitifully low. When I got out of law school, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I wasn't going to make very much money practicing law. Betty went to work teaching third grade in the Charleston Elementary School at the princely sum of $125 a month. That is what we lived on. Things were very tough. In a relative sense, things are not all that much better right now. Incidentally, Charleston was the first school in the South to integrate schools after the Brown decision in 1954. Yes, my little hometown was the first school south of the Mason-Dixon Line to integrate its schools following the Brown decision. We are proud of that. I am a great champion, as a result of my experience on that school board, of public education. I have nothing against private schools. When I was elected Governor, because I was apprehensive about the safety of a couple of my children, I sent them to private schools. I was concerned about their safety not because of the schools, but because their father was Governor. The second reason I sent them, of course, is that I had the money to do it. Under the Coverdell bill, if we are going to spend $1.6 billion over 10 years, that equates to the princely sum of $160 million a year. Do you know what that does for education in this country? Nothing. That is not a drop in the bucket compared to the educational needs of this Nation. Senator Moseley-Braun has an amendment to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of the school buildings in this country. I think it is $5 billion over a 5-year period. That doesn't even begin to address the problem when you consider the fact that 93 percent of the money under this bill goes to the wealthiest people in America, goes to those people who go to private schools, and 7 percent goes to the other 85 percent of the people in America who go to public schools. I repeat--this is a Treasury Department figure--93 percent of the dollars that would go for education under this bill goes to the families who send their children to private schools. That is 12 percent. Seven percent of the money goes to the other 85 percent. That tells you all you need to know about what this bill is all about. It doesn't address the problems of education in the country. It simply extends those IRAs to the first 12 grades. That in itself is nonsense. If all of this money is going for private schools, then there is not very much of it--$37 a year--for a family who sends their children to a private school. Who is going to send their kid to a private school for $37 a year? But more importantly, the people who send their children to public schools get the princely sum of $7 a year. So you have to ask, what is going on here? What do we think we are going to do for somebody for $7 a year, or even the wealthy people for $37 a year? Mr. President, that tells you one thing. The reason I am so stridently opposed to this bill is that it is a nose under the tent of crooks to aid private schools, even though it be very small and it is a diminution of public education. I can tell you where you are headed. You are headed toward the abandonment of public education in this country, and you are headed for one of the biggest disasters of the Nation when you go to vouchers. I am adamantly, and always have been, opposed to vouchers. But I can tell you that will ultimately be the end result of this bill. Our educational system is not perfect--never has been, never will be. But the reason we had a tough time in Charleston, the reason we have a tough time in America in public education is we are not committing the resources to it. We have a $50-billion surplus this year. Think about it. Six years ago we were looking at a $300-billion deficit. Today, we are looking at a $50-billion surplus. I am not voting for tax cuts. I am not going to vote to spend that $50 billion for tax cuts when we have 40 million people with no health insurance. We have an educational system that is 13th among 17 developed nations of the world. We have environmental problems that are going to cost billions and billions to solve. I will tell you what I would like to do if I were king. I can tell you Bill Clinton agrees with this. I would start a GI bill to make sure that every child in America got a college education. They would get a Pell grant--not loans. They would get grants. Every kid in America--86 percent of the people in this country--would go to college if they had the money. If it had not been for the GI bill waiting for me when I got out of the Marine Corps in 1946, I wouldn't be standing here. There are about seven other Members of the Senate who would not be here either if it had not been for the GI bill. If you want to spend that $50-billion surplus, give the children of America a college education and make sure they get it. Mr. President, I will close by saying, if I had my way, in addition to giving every child a college education, I would also reeducate the teachers of America. I can remember when the Carnegie Foundation started the program to allow teachers of this country--a limited number of them--to improve their skills by going to summer seminars about 10 or 12 years ago. The first one was at the University of Texas which had a summer seminar dealing with Virgil's Aeneas and Homer's Ulysses, comparing them, and 4,400 schoolteachers applied for 250 spots. That shows teachers want to improve their education if they had the money. Since that time we have done a little bit in the National Endowment for the Humanities. If I had my way about it, every schoolteacher in this country would be making a minimum of $50,000. How do you expect teachers to spend all of this time going to college and then standing out there and getting killed, as one in my State did 3 weeks ago in Jonesboro, AR? And we pay them $25,000 or $30,000 a year. They can go to law school and start at $75,000 to $100,000 a year. Why would anybody want to teach school when it is a dangerous profession among other things? The pay is miserable. Those are the reasons our educational system is lacking. Mr. President, I will not belabor it any longer but to simply say this is precisely the wrong thing to be doing if you are trying to improve education in this country. Improve the teacher quality, improve the buildings they go to school in, improve the safety of the teachers, and improve the discipline in the classroom. This is a nose-under-the- tent approach. I cannot state it strongly enough. I thank God Bill Clinton is in the White House. He will veto this thing the minute it hits his desk. I will praise him for it. I yield such time as may be remaining in opposition to the Mack amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. The Senator is correct.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I call for the regular order regarding the Mack amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use in opposition to the amendment. Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I will not belabor this any further. Everybody knows the argument. It is just a question of whether you are willing to do right or not. We are mining $2 billion worth just in gold a year off Federal lands that we have given the mining companies--gave them. They pay no royalty. They didn't pay anything for it. I forget who it was who talked about how valuable minerals were. Eighty percent of the gold mined in this country goes for jewelry. And we are willing to subsidize that to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year when we have disabled children in school waiting for us to fulfill a promise? It is just as simple as that. I yield the remainder of my time and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield myself such time as I may use.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, isn't it wonderful that the hard rock mining companies don't pay taxes? Isn't that just remarkable? We give them billions of dollars' worth of minerals for $2.50 an acre, we allow them to create environmental disasters, we allow them to take the minerals and not pay one dime in royalty, and they are not subject to pay any taxes. Isn't that just wonderful? The oil companies, who right now are getting about 50 percent as much for their oil as they got a year ago, not only have to pay billions for the rights to drill for oil on Federal lands, but they also have to pay royalties. And they pay taxes. If somebody walked in here and made the argument that was just made about the fact that mining companies pay taxes, if somebody made the suggestion that oil companies not pay taxes, you would be laughed out that door. If the same argument were made for coal companies who pay zillions just for the right to take the coal and a 12.5 percent royalty, and if we suggested that they not have to pay taxes, you would be laughed out the door. What is it about the rock mining industry? We give them billions of dollars' worth of gold, silver, platinum, palladium; they create environmental disasters; they don't pay a dime in royalties; they take a depreciation allowance on top of that of 15 to 12 percent; we give it to them and then pay them to take it. The children of this Nation--we give 9 percent to the school district to take care of disabled children. I can tell you who is going to win in this battle here today. It isn't going to be the disabled children, it is going to be the same people who have won for the last 8 years, as I presented it. It will be the mining companies. They will continue to get Federal lands for nothing. They will continue to get a depletion allowance to mine it. They will continue not paying Uncle Sam one dime in royalty. If they come to your house and say, ``You have this tract of land out back loaded with gold, and we would like to mine it,'' do you know what they are willing to pay? Eighteen percent royalty. But they come to the U.S. Government and say, ``You have this tract of land that has gold on it.'' We say, ``Oh, really? Please take it. Please leave an environmental disaster to the tune of $76 billion for the taxpayers to clean up. Please don't pay us any royalty. We do need a few billion dollars more for disabled children, but not from you.'' One of these days, the people of this country are going to rise up in righteous indignation when it finally soaks in on the American people what is going on in this industry and how Congress is aiding and abetting one of the biggest scams in the history of the world. Colleagues, when you walk in here to vote today, look at that chart. You have a choice of removing an unjustified tax loophole that is not available to anybody else--nobody else. You can remove it from the biggest mining companies in the world--not the United States, in the world--and give it to the disabled children of this country, the school boards which have been waiting for us to fulfill a 23-year promise to provide 40 percent of the cost of taking care of disabled children. So far, we have paid the paltry sum of 9 percent. I yield the floor and save remainder of my time.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, how much time do the opponents have?

Mr. BUMPERS. How much time do I have remaining? THE PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas has 5 minutes 44 seconds.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield 4 minutes to the Senator from Wisconsin.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from New Hampshire.

Mr. BUMPERS. Not at all.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield myself 5 minutes. Colleagues, not long ago we debated what we called unfunded mandates to the cities and States of the country. A lot of tears were shed on this floor, because we said we were imposing all sorts of obligations on the cities and the counties and the States and making them pick up the tab for it. I am here this morning to tell you about the biggest unfunded mandate of all. In 1975, the Congress--this body, along with the House--passed what is called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, and we said in 1975 in the legislation that we wanted disabled children taken care of and that we would pay 40 percent of the cost. Twenty-three years later we are paying 9 percent of the cost. The schools of this Nation have been literally bankrupting themselves to make up the difference. You are talking about billions of dollars that the United States made a solemn obligation to pay and has reneged on. Having said that, let me tell you about the most unwarranted tax loophole in the Nation, and it is called a depletion allowance. It goes to the oil companies. It goes to natural gas companies. It goes to coal companies. And it goes to people in the mining industry who hardly paid a red cent for the gold, silver, platinum, palladium, zinc, copper--you name it--that they take off Federal lands. I stood here on this floor--this is about the 8th or 9th year--and everybody knows the arguments. Everybody knows that it is the biggest ripoff going on in America today. And you talk about--you talk about-- doing away with the Internal Revenue Code and betting on the come that somehow or other we will get a new revenue code before this one expires--listen to this. You go down to the Gulf of Mexico and you bid $1 billion to drill for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, and you are entitled to a depletion. You ought to get a depletion allowance. And how much is it? Oh, it is about--well, I do not have it here. I think it is 15 percent. Fifteen percent they get for a depletion allowance because they paid $1 billion for it. And everybody--the coal companies--we let coal competitively. We let our oil and gas leases competitively. But for some reason or other we give away all the gold and silver and platinum and palladium and other hard-rock minerals we have. So what else do we do? We not only give them away, we pay them to take it. How do we do that? Here it is. Let us assume that Stillwater Mining Company in Montana, for example, which says there is $35 billion worth of platinum and palladium under a 2,000 acre tract, they intend to mine it and they intend to pay the Government roughly $10,000 for it--$10,000 for $35 billion worth of minerals that belong to the taxpayers. Oh, the poor taxpayers. How we lament their plight in this body. Except when it comes to hard-rock mining. And then you know what the taxpayers get? They get nothing. You know what they pay? They buy this land for $2.50 an acre. Stillwater will pay about $10,000 for $35 billion. That is what they are going to pay for it. And here is what they pay the Federal Government. That is what they pay the taxpayers in royalties--zip, zero, zilch. Not a red cent. What else do they get? They get a depletion allowance of 15 percent on gold. They get a depletion allowance on silver of 15 percent. They get a depletion allowance on platinum of 22 percent and on palladium of 22 percent. That is right. The American taxpayer--the American taxpayer--is the big sucker in this whole thing. Here is an opportunity to fulfill an unfunded mandate and remove one of the most scandalous loopholes on the tax books of this Nation. Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time. How much time does the Senator from New Hampshire desire?

Mr. BUMPERS. I yielded myself 5 minutes and nobody interrupted me.

Mr. BUMPERS. I had asked unanimous consent that we be given 30 minutes, but the Chair said in the opening this amendment would be 30 minutes, equally divided.

Mr. BUMPERS. I ask unanimous consent that 30 minutes be provided.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Will the Senator from New Mexico yield for an observation? The last vote took approximately 25 minutes. Vote on Amendment No. 2218, as modified, as amended

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, in 1975, the U.S. Congress passed a bill called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, we promised the school districts of this country that if they would abide by the rules we set for taking care of disabled children in school, we would foot 40 percent of the bill. We cried tears galore around here about unfunded mandates to the cities and the States and the counties, and we took care of it. Here is the biggest unfunded mandate of all. We promised the school districts of this country 40 percent for disabled children, and so far, after 23 years, we are giving them 9 percent. You get a double whammy. You get a chance to fulfill that mandate and, No. 2, take care of a totally unjustified tax break we give the mining companies. We give them Federal lands for $2.50 an acre, they mine the gold and silver off of it, and we pay them to take it, a 15 percent depletion allowance. So I would take that depletion allowance and give it to disabled children.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, first I express my sincere gratitude to the Senator from North Dakota for taking on this issue. I decided perhaps nobody was going to offer such an amendment. But I take this opportunity to say to my colleagues and the American people, for that matter--we are not supposed to call attention to C-SPAN2, but I hope a lot of people are watching C-SPAN2 because I want to say that this is my 24th year in the Senate, and this is the most irresponsible, without question, the most irresponsible provision I have ever seen in a piece of legislation. The very idea of saying we are going to abolish the Internal Revenue Code without a clue as to what we are going to replace it with is the height of irresponsibility. I know the applause lines. As the old saying goes, I know how to bring people to their feet. The object of any responsible legislator is to bring people to their senses. Everybody knows that when you talk to the Chamber of Commerce, if you are looking for that nice applause, just get on the Internal Revenue Service. Everybody has his own favorite horror story. I have my own. I daresay every Member of this body has his own horror story about their arrogance, how overbearing they are, how they have cost you money. Those are indefensible. I am not defending those. But I can tell you, if you think the year 2000 computer glitch is bad, if you think that may bring this country to the brink of disaster, you just eliminate the Internal Revenue Code with absolutely no thought of what you are going to replace it with, just as this country is on a sound financial basis, and as we are looking forward to a surplus this year, what in the name of all that is good and holy are we thinking about? Is it going to be a flat tax? That gets a lot of applause in some places. As far as I am concerned, the flat tax was created by the ``Flat Earth Society,'' but that is beside the point. I know how to get applause talking about a flat tax. Everybody ``pays the same amount.'' Is it going to be replaced by some kind of a flat tax where your church contributions won't be deductible? Is it going to be a flat tax where, as the Senator from North Dakota has pointed out, your mortgage interest will not be deductible? ``Mr. Businessman, before you applaud, are you willing to give up depreciation? Are you willing to give up hundreds of other things that are in the code now that you know about?'' I will tell you one thing, I will take the known, no matter how bad it may be, before I will take the unknown. And for the Members of the Senate to buy into this proposition of saying we are going to eliminate--eliminate--the Internal Revenue Code with nothing to replace it--do you know something, I didn't vote for that extra thousand pages in the Internal Revenue Code last summer. All the people who were so hot for the balanced budget amendment and the big tax cuts and what do we get? A thousand more pages in the Internal Revenue Code so they can go out and tell the Chamber of Commerce what a horror it is--the same people who bring you this piece of trash. Mr. President, I, again, thank my friend from North Dakota for alerting the people of this body and, hopefully, across America, that we are not just going to take this country to the brink of a disaster, we are going to take it right over the brink, and if you get to the year 2000 after you eliminate the Internal Revenue Code and you don't have anything to collect $1.7 trillion with, you tell the Social Security recipients how that is going to work out. Tell everybody--the Medicare people--how that is going to work out. I plead with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, do not buy into an applause line. Keep your sanity and do the rational thing and strike this from this resolution. I yield back the remainder of my time. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Does the Senator intend to stack the votes on these five amendments for in the morning?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question? In the calling off of the names of the amendment, I have an amendment there, and I did not hear my name called. Is it at the desk?

Mr. BUMPERS. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I wonder if the Senator from New Jersey would yield 8 minutes.