Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I will try to make this short.

Mr. BUMPERS

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I came over to speak on a beautiful, lazy Friday afternoon--that is one of the times you can get the floor without having to sit around too long--and talk about three or four items that I have just been reflecting on--nothing heavy. But to take up campaign finance reform first, that issue has had the Senate tied in knots, now, for about 6 weeks, so tied in knots that we are not going to be able to finish the work that we ought to finish, particularly on the highway transportation bill, and that is a real tragedy. Nevertheless, I have felt very strongly about this issue for a long time, so strongly that earlier this year I introduced my own bill to provide for public financing of campaigns. I think I could probably say without fear of contradiction--and at my age I am not likely to live long enough to see this country go to public financing--and yet in my opinion that is the only solution: If you take all private money out of financing of campaigns in this country then you know that any private money in a campaign is a violation. Senator Thompson has just announced--essentially announced--the shutting down of the hearings on campaign finance reform. Nobody's fault--I thought Senator Thompson did a credible job. I thought all the members of the committee did. But there really was not very much there, except occasional abuses, cases of neglect, inattention, and heavy partisanship, but very little in a way that could remotely be construed as illegal. Yet, for all the abuses--and there were some--uncovered and testified to and about during those hearings, there is not any strong sentiment here to change the system under which those abuses occurred. If we do nothing this year, we do nothing next year, you can rest assured the abuses will continue. I come from the Democratic Party. Of course, when it comes to raising money, we are a threatened species. But completely aside from the politics of the issue--and the fact is that the Republicans outraise us--I think our Democratic National Committee is in debt by $15 million. I saw a big story in the paper this morning that the Democratic National Committee was going to raise $2.5 million at a retreat in Florida this weekend, and the story acted as though there was something ominous and maybe certainly unethical about it. But it didn't seem that way to me at all, not under the existing system. There is nothing wrong with people giving $50,000 a couple to attend a weekend retreat. That is a pretty steep price, but people do it every weekend in both parties. The price is just not normally that high. But I also feel that as long as we allow that sort of thing to continue, we are effectively selling off the Government to the highest bidder. I said on the floor, and it bears repeating, you cannot expect a democracy to function as it is supposed to function when money plays the role it plays in our campaigns. So, I hope that, come next March or whenever they have agreed to, if there has been such an agreement, that we can address the McCain-Feingold bill. I am a cosponsor of the bill, but I must say it pales compared to what I think ought to be done, namely go to public financing and take private money out of it. I saw a list in the Washington Post yesterday of all the incumbents and how much money they had in the bank and how much the challengers had. And the incumbents are all friends of mine. This is not to belittle them. They are simply taking advantage of the system as it is. But the incumbents have millions in the bank and the challengers had virtually nothing. As a country lawyer from a town of 1,200 people who jumped up from a private practice to run for Governor--which most people considered insane, trying to get me to submit to a saliva test-- believe you me, I know the power of incumbency and I faced it. In the first primary, I spent $90,000. You couldn't get on the evening news for a week for that today. I don't want to get too preachy about it. This is something you can get preachy about. But the fact is, I see campaign finance reform now in a different way than I saw it even as recently as 2 or 3 years ago. I see it now as a real threat to this Nation. It is no longer, at least it should not be, a partisan matter. It is, and it shouldn't be, because everybody's future is at stake. I saw in the paper this morning where one of the candidates in Virginia is going to be given $1 million by his party. I saw last week where one of the candidates for Susan Molinari's spot, I guess it is in New York, that one of the parties is dumping $800,000 into that campaign and that person's opponent had $35,000 in the bank. You don't have to be brilliant to know how those races are going to come out. Television does it all and you cannot get on television without money. That is what these massive contributions are all about. Whoever has the most money 94 percent of the time wins. You can hardly call that a democracy because, as I say, it is threatening.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, everybody has heard that old expression about fools walk in where angels fear to tread. I have heard as a practicing lawyer, as a citizen and certainly as a Member of the U.S. Senate, as many tales about the IRS as anybody in this body. There have been unbelievable abuses, a lot of which have been aired in the hearings that Chairman Roth held in the Finance Committee. You don't get accomplished diplomats for what we pay auditors in the IRS. Oftentimes, you get somebody who really is, indeed, abusive. Even though he is spending the taxpayer's money he is auditing, he can be very unpleasant. It isn't just the abusiveness of the auditors. Occasionally it is also their incompetence. I was trying to help somebody one time and made a phone call back when I was practicing law. ``We can't talk to you; send us a letter authorizing us.'' I was a little offended by that, but at the same time, I understood. Anybody could call and say, ``I'm calling on behalf of'' somebody else. They don't know who they are, so I had to get an affidavit from my client and send it in saying I was authorized to represent her in a tax dispute. But my point is all this legislation to abolish the IRS without putting anything in its place is not all that troubling to me because something has to give. You can't abolish the IRS and abolish the Tax Code without replacing it with something. What you replace it with certainly ought not to be a flat tax. So far as I am concerned, the flat tax was created by the Flat Earth Society. A flat tax, No. 1, is not ever going to pass here because invariably it does not allow people to deduct interest on their homes. It doesn't allow charitable contributions. The church people, the universities of the country who depend so extensively on giving are not ever going to sit still for a flat tax. If the middle- and lower-income groups of the country knew what the flat tax would do to them, they wouldn't stand still for it. I can promise you that under every flat-tax scenario I have seen, people who make between $30,000 and $100,000 are going to wind up paying more, and people who make more than that are going to wind up paying less. I have not seen one single flat-tax proposal that doesn't take all the progressivity out of the Tax Code. I can tell you, I only have 1 more year in the Senate, but I am not going to vote during that year for anything that even smacks of a flat tax. Oh, everybody thinks it is so simple. Do you know why the Tax Code is so complex? Because of the U.S. Congress. They drafted it. We just got through adding about 800 pages to it with the so-called balanced budget bill. Of course, it is complex. When you consider the myriad of transactions that occur in this country and you are trying to deal with all of them and there are lobbyists all over the city asking for special favors--this little thing in our business, and this little thing in our business--that is the reason the code is indecipherable today. So don't blame the IRS because the Tax Code is indecipherable, blame the U.S. Congress. We are the ones who drafted every word of it. So, Mr. President, bear in mind that for the last year--and the IRS has many statistics on it--there is about $100 billion, somewhere between $92 and $95 billion in tax evasion every year. What does that mean? Let's assume in the year 1997 that we collected $600 billion in personal income tax, and that is probably pretty close to correct. Assume further that the IRS had been able to collect the $100 billion which is not being paid that ought to be paid. You could reduce taxes by $100 billion. That would be pretty nice. You hear all kinds of talk around here about tax cuts. But nobody ever wants to give the IRS any more money to enforce the Tax Code against those people who are paying no taxes. One of the reasons our taxes are as high as they are is because of the underground economy operated by people who deal in cash and do not pay taxes for the privilege of being an American citizen. I am inclined to support--I read an op-ed piece in the Post this week strongly opposed to this idea. I do not know whether it was this week or not. But this business of shifting the burden to the IRS from the taxpayer has some merit. I offered a bill in 1980, and it passed the Senate. It never passed the House, but it passed the Senate. The Republicans liked it so well they put it in their platform in the convention in 1980. But I had a provision that said, any time a regulator comes into your plant and charges you with a violation, you would have to sustain the burden of proving that that regulation was valid. If somebody comes into your plant and says, ``Your fire extinguisher is 2 inches too high off the floor and, therefore, I'm fining you $100,'' it would be incumbent, under existing law, for the person who owned that plant to prove that Congress did not intend for him to pay a fine because his fire extinguisher was 2 inches too high off the ground. Under my bill that passed the Senate in 1980, the burden would have shifted to the regulator, the guy who is trying to impose the fine. He would have to prove that the regulation is valid and within the intent of Congress. You shift the burden. But my bill excluded the Internal Revenue Code. I won't go into all the reasons we did that. It did not seem workable. But now I am going to look very closely at this proposal of Bill Archer's, from the House, to shift the burden to the IRS when they allege that somebody is deficient or made a mistake on their tax return or generally state when the IRS is accusing somebody of owing money, they will have to sustain the burden of proving that instead of shifting the burden immediately to the taxpayer. Mr. President, I had one or two other issues I was going to talk about. But in the interest of expediting this evening and allowing people in the Senate to get out of here--they all look at me with mean looks, so I know everybody is wanting to shut this place down--I will forgo a couple of other items and save them for next Friday afternoon. Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, there is a lot of talk now since the President has announced that the deficit this year for 1997 is, I believe, $22.6 billion. That is an incredible figure. In 1993, you are looking at a Senator who was genuinely concerned, really concerned, not just concerned, alarmed about where we were heading with these massive deficits of $290 billion a year, and no one seeming to want to do something about it, either cut spending or raise taxes, both of which would be necessary to address the problem. I have said on the floor before, so far as I am concerned, regardless of what President Clinton does before or from now on, his legacy is going to be the bill in 1993 that addressed that problem in a very courageous way, so courageous it cost a lot of Members on my side of the aisle their seats. But it reduced the deficit from $290 billion a year, and it is reduced to this year $22.6 billion. That is an awesome, awesome result, and one in which the people in this country ought to take great pride. Then I hear on the House side where the Speaker said, if we have a surplus left next year, he would like to have it go on to defense spending. Completely aside from what I want to say on the subject, that is not where I want it to go. I want the so-called surplus to go right into the National Treasury, because even though the deficit this year is $22.6 billion, that does not include $114 billion that we are using in trust funds--Social Security, airport, highway trust funds--to get to that point. So while we are all patting ourselves on the back, Senator Hollings says giving ourselves the Good Government Award, for doing something about the deficit, we should not ever lose sight of the fact that the $22.6 billion is not the deficit. The deficit is $22.6 billion plus the $114 billion we are spending in trust funds by borrowing, and until we add $114 billion in surplus to the $22.6 billion in deficit, we will not have a balanced budget. I agree with Alan Greenspan--I don't always agree with him--but I agree with him on one thing. Even using the jargon of the Senate and assuming that $22.6 billion is the deficit, that is not the honest deficit, but assuming that it is, if we have anything in excess of that next year, I would like to see it go into the Treasury, because the more we pay on the national debt, the lower interest rates are going to go, and the lower interest rates go, the better off the economy is going to be.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Thank you very much. Mr. President, we are here today debating this issue which was a political creation in the beginning. It was a terrible idea and in my opinion, plainly unconstitutional. Ronald Reagan was President. He had promised the American people he would balance the budget by 1984 after he was sworn in in 1981. And in 1984 we did not have a balanced budget. On the contrary, deficits were soaring wildly out of control. And then we begin to hear and read where the President said, ``Well, you can't blame me because, you know, I can't spend a penny that Congress doesn't appropriate.'' And I am not going to belabor that argument, but the next thing we heard was, ``If only the President could pick out all those pork projects and veto them, these deficits wouldn't be soaring out of control.'' First of all, if the President had full line-item veto authority at the time, according to most calculations, the amount of dollar savings as a result of those vetoes would have been infinitesimal in comparison to that staggering deficit. All that line item veto talk was nothing but a sheer diversionary tactic in the face of a promise that had not been kept. And I do not mean to denigrate President Reagan. But that rhetoric was the genesis of a very bad idea and in my opinion a patently unconstitutional idea. I am almost bitter, Mr. President, at the passage of this line item veto. The worst thing that can happen to a politician is to allow himself to become cynical or bitter, so I will say that I am elated. I am elated that this day has come. A lot of the people in this body stood and made magnificent speeches about how wonderful the line-item veto would be. They declared that 80 percent of the American people favored the line-item veto. I understand that; I took a lot of political heat, along with a lot of people on this side of the aisle who stood up against the line item veto. Senator Hatfield, who is no longer in the Senate, stood up against it, along with a few people on that side of the aisle. We all took unbelievable political heat back home because it was wildly popular. The people had been led to believe, and they did in fact believe that the real problem with the spending habits of Congress was that the President did not have the line-item veto. So I don't know how many times the line item veto proposal was presented in this body, but I promise you I voted no, no, no every time. So I am elated today because a lot of the people who got a lot of political benefit out of their support for the line item veto are now complaining. They are not saying that it was a mistake to pass it in the first place. No, they say that the trouble is that the President has abused the authority. Regardless of whether the President has properly vetoed these items before us today, I am not surprised at their protests. This is precisely what we told them they could expect if they passed the line-item veto. It is a bad idea, and plainly unconstitutional in the way it transfers the power of the purse to the President. I heard Senator Graham from Florida about his use of the line-item veto when he was Governor of Florida. I had the line-item veto when I was Governor of Arkansas--and I used it. You know how I used it? I would call a legislator down to my office and say, ``You just voted against that administration bill, and you have a $250,000 appropriation coming for a big project in your district. And I can tell you, that sucker's toast unless you get down there and change your vote.'' That is what I did. One of the arguments we made here was that the President could cow virtually any Member of the U.S. Senate with a line-item veto. I do not think President Clinton intended to insult Members of this body when he vetoed these 34 items, but it was a terrible political mistake. Any time you veto bills that affect more than 25 States, you are in trouble. I do not think the President was really thinking about that. Incidentally, he followed me as Governor of Arkansas. And he used the line-item veto pretty extensively when he was Governor. But one of the main reasons I object to it is that it gives the President unbelievable power over the Members of this body. And I can tell you, the Framers of the Constitution never intended for a President to have that kind of power. That is the reason they said: The Congress will pass the laws, and present them to the President, not item by item, but bill by bill. So, Mr. President, in conclusion, let me say I hope some of my colleagues will take this to heart and not trivialize the Constitution. It is almost contemptuous the way we treat our Constitution sometimes. I have voted for one constitutional amendment since I came to the U.S. Senate. That was the Equal Rights Amendment. I am sorry I voted for that, because it is not necessary. I have voted ``no'' 37 times on constitutional amendments, and ``yes'' once, and I regret that one. That is not to say I will never vote for a constitutional amendment, obviously. I reserve judgment on that. But the thing that chagrins me more than anything else is that every time somebody comes up with a cute political idea, they want to put it in the Constitution. And I have taken heat on prayer in school and the balanced budget amendment and flag burning and term limits, and court- stripping proposals. I have taken my share of heat on all those things, almost every one of which undeniably was political. So, as I say, if some of my colleagues--if as many as one colleague today is thinking, ``I regret having voted for this thing. I regret having voted for something that in my heart I knew was unconstitutional,'' I hope those members will think hard about this vote. Let me close, Mr. President, by saying that I am going to vote to uphold the President's veto. That may sound a little bit perverse, I suppose, based on what I have been saying. I do not know all the merits of these 34 items. That probably does not speak well for me, but I can tell you one thing, if one of them affected Arkansas, I would be voting to override it. And this entire package of line item vetoes is going to be overwhelmingly overridden by this body. There may not be five votes to uphold the President. But I will vote to uphold the veto and I will tell you precisely why. I want to make it so painful to support the line item veto that when we come to our senses and the legislation comes up to repeal the line-item veto, that it will be passed 100 to nothing. So the more pain we inflict, the more likely that is to occur. Ultimately, I think the line item veto will be repealed. I think that if Senator Byrd could bring up his line-item veto repeal today, I would like to believe it would pass almost 100 to zip. It was a terrible idea. And the time has come when the Senate should think better of it. I look forward to getting a piece of legislation up here even before the Supreme Court strikes it down. I personally believe the Supreme Court has very little alternative but to declare this thing unconstitutional when it is presented to them by somebody with standing. So, Mr. President, this is really a happy day for me, now that the Senate is addressing this item. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. Who controls the time on this side?

Mr. BUMPERS. Ten minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, The Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1997, which the Senate passed yesterday, includes a provision which authorizes the Secretary to provide funds to a national organization which promotes educational opportunities at the primary and secondary levels in rural areas with a historic incidence of poverty and low academic achievement. The 1990 Report of the Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission identified quality of education as one if its 68 issues to be addressed through State and/or Congressional action. One of several recommendations offered by the Commission was that educational agencies in the Delta establish cooperative partnerships with institutions of higher education. In 1992, the Delta Teachers' Academy was launched as one of the first large-scale, federally funded responses to the Delta Development Commission. Since that time, the Delta Teachers' Academy has offered outstanding opportunities for elementary and high school teachers to increase their academic proficiency and has become the largest professional development program operated by the National Faculty. Acting under the assumption that well-prepared teachers beget well-educated students, Congress has continued to provide funding for the Delta Teachers' Academy. Giving teachers the resources, knowledge, and support they need to achieve the goals set for them should reside at the heart of educational improvement efforts. The importance of preparing young people for the challenges and realities of the 21st Century is indisputable. The region of the United States known as the Lower Mississippi Delta--Eastern Arkansas, Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky, Western Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana--has lagged behind the rest of the country in economic growth and prosperity. This area suffers from a greater amount of measurable poverty and unemployment than any other region of the country. It is inhibited by people who have used their sense of place to develop a cultural and historical heritage that is rich and unique. A letter from then-Governor Bill Clinton which accompanied the Delta Commission's 1990 report identified the region as ``an enormous untapped resource for America'' that ``can and should be saved.'' The Delta Teachers' Academy has endeavored to do just that. The Delta Teachers' Academy, the National Faculty's single largest program, unites teachers from largely poor and isolated districts for long-term study in core disciplines. The three-year program combines intensive summer institutes with on-site sessions during the school year. Each teacher team works in collaboration with college and university scholars in one or more of five core disciplines--English, geography, history, math, and science. As teachers improve their mastery of these subject areas and gain confidence in their professional development, they are able to pass their knowledge along to the students with whom they come in contact. In 1995, the program served 600 teachers in 43 program sites. The Academy has continued to expand its outreach efforts and currently serves over 1000 teachers in the 219 counties and parishes comprising the Lower Mississippi Delta. Positive outcomes have been reported for the Delta Teachers' Academy by the General Accounting office in June of 1995 and as recently as August of this year by Westat, an independent entity commissioned to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Both determined that the Delta Teachers' Academy is effective in fulfilling its two primary goals--increasing understanding of academic subjects and providing new and useful teaching skills. The GAO report specifically noted the Academy's success in helping teachers' institute changes in their curricula and classroom practice. I feel that the Delta Teachers' Academy represents community partnership at its very best. I am pleased that Congress has agreed to provide a special authorization for this incredibly worthwhile program. This makes clear Congress' commitment to improving educational opportunity and the overall quality of life for people living in the Lower Mississippi Delta and the need to continue our support such as the Delta Teachers' Academy.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from Mississippi, Senator Cochran, in bringing to the Senate floor the conference report for the fiscal year 1998 appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and related agencies. We concluded a successful conference with the House and although our 602(b) allocation had to be adjusted downward, we were still able to maintain relatively high levels of funding for many important programs. As I stated during consideration of the Senate bill, I had hoped we could provide higher levels of funding for agricultural research. I am happy to report that the conference agreement provides a higher level of funding for the Agricultural Research Service than was contained in either the earlier House or Senate versions. Funding for the Food Safety Inspection Service is provided at a level more than $15 million above last year and additional funds are included for the President's Food Safety Initiative at USDA and FDA. The conference report contains funding for conservation programs well above last year's level and I am happy to report that the House and Senate conferees have agreed to changes in rural development activities that will protect program integrity and make them more efficient. The WIC Program retains the increase of more than $100 million above fiscal year 1997 that was included in the Senate bill and full funding for FDA's youth tobacco initiative is provided. I regret that we had to defer consideration of this conference report until this time. We had completed conference action and had been prepared to conclude action on this bill well in advance of the end of the previous fiscal year. However, questions raised by the authorization committees of the Food and Drug Administration postponed this final action until today. I look forward to quick passage of this conference report and approval by the President. We have already seen the President exercise his new authorities of line-item veto on bills presented to him. I no doubt suspect that he will review this legislation with a similar critical eye and, without doubt, he will find items that had not originated with the executive branch. Mr. President, I do not here intend to reopen floor debate on the ill-conceived line-item veto. However, I remind my colleagues, and my friend in the White House, that the Congress has very explicit responsibilities derived from the U.S. Constitution relating to the expenditure of funds. Simply because an item does not originate with the executive does not mean it is without merit. Let me plainly observe that when this bill was on the Senate floor in July of this year, it passed by a resounding 98 to 0. Mr. President, that simple statistic should speak for itself and send an important message to those who would undue the work we have done. In closing, let me again say what a pleasure it has been to work with my friend from Mississippi, the chairman of this subcommittee. He understands the programs and the issues contained in this bill and his leadership has been beyond value. Let me also again thank the subcommittee's majority staff, Rebecca Davies, Martha Scott Poindexter, Rochelle Graves, and, on this side, Galen Fountain, Carole Geagley, and Ben Noble of my personal staff. All their work has been important to completing work on this bill.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I agree with the Senator from Washington. The purpose of the RC&D program is to encourage and improve the capability of State and local units of government and local nonprofit organizations in rural areas to plan, develop, and carry out programs for resource conservation and development. The NRCS also helps coordinate available Federal, State, and local programs to ensure adequate protection of natural resources while promoting sound development practices. Funding of the RC&D Councils is an important priority for the NRCS, as correctly emphasized by the conferees, and I urge the NRCS to not overlook opportunities to enhance the efforts of the RC&D Councils in a manner complimentary and consistent with these stated objectives.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. If the appraisal came out more than that and Mr. Hurwitz decided he wanted the appraised value, we could not pay him the appraised value; is that correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I will engage the distinguished manager of the bill in a short colloquy, but let me start off by saying that there are parts of this bill that are confusing because any bill of this magnitude obviously has some things that are hard to understand without knowing precisely what was intended. These are fairly arcane questions, usually not very entertaining to anybody except those of us who deal with issues affecting the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior. Question No. 1. As I understand it, the U.S. Government will pay $250 million for the Headwaters Forest as provided in the bill; correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. So we are only authorizing under this bill, and subject to the 180 days within which the committees have to act, we are only authorizing the expenditure of $250 million for Headwaters Forest?

Mr. BUMPERS. Right. Now, there is a provision in here that says Headwaters Forest must be appraised, through a normal appraisal, the appraisal submitted to the GAO within 30 days, et cetera. My question is, if the appraisal came out that the Headwaters Forest was worth more than $250 million, would the President have the authority to spend more money out of the Land and Water Conservation Fund to pay the appraised price?

Mr. BUMPERS. I know it was.

Mr. BUMPERS. Senator, if I may, here are the figures furnished me on the point I am trying to make. This is a real bonanza for the State of Montana--and I have nothing against them and their two Senators; they are two of the dearest friends I have in this body. So it always causes me grief when somebody is getting something, just as I am under this bill, to say these things. Here is the figure given to me. The Otter Creek tracts contain 533 million tons of coal. The current price of such coal is $8 a ton. It would come to $4.26 billion, and if you take 12.5 percent of that, you come out with about $266 million in royalties that the State could get. Mr. President, that is a lot more than the $10 million that I think most Senators in this body think we are giving the State of Montana. So I wanted to raise that point because, as you know, the administration is pretty concerned about this bill. I don't know that the President would veto it. If he were to veto that particular provision under the line-item authority that he now has and the Supreme Court later determined that the line-item veto is unconstitutional, then this is still a viable provision and his line-item veto of it would not stand.

Mr. BUMPERS. One final question and a remark. I see the Senator from New Mexico on the floor. He and I have talked about this privately. There is a grazing provision in this bill that is of some concern to me. There is a court order in New Mexico regarding grazing rights, and there is a provision in here that says that none of the funds may be used by the Forest Service to carry out a court order. As I told him, I am not going to get into that, but I think that has a little bit of danger. Just for the record, I will let the Senator say what he said to me privately about that provision.

Mr. BUMPERS. Senator, you and I have talked about this in private. I think it is well to get this on the record also. You may have alluded to this in your opening remarks. But another item that I think the administration is terribly concerned about is the provision in the bill that says ``no funds can be spent to revise forest plans until new final interim or final rules for forest land management planning are published in the Federal Register.'' You know, of course, under the national forest management plan, they are required to update the plans on the forests periodically. It is my understanding that some 42 plans would be blocked until the Forest Service publishes new final interim or final rules for forest land management planning. I can tell you that is costing the administration considerable pain. Would the Senator like to elaborate on that?

Mr. BUMPERS. There is a provision in the bill that says before the President can spend that money, the $315 million, which includes both the New World Mine and the Headwaters Forest, before the President can spend that money to acquire those two properties, the authorizing committees of the House and the Senate have 180 days from the date of enactment of this bill in which to take action. If they take no action, presumably the President would be authorized to go ahead and make the purchase?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I have authority from Senator Byrd to yield myself time on this.

Mr. BUMPERS. If you choose to answer, by all means, do.

Mr. BUMPERS. I think March 1 was the date.

Mr. BUMPERS. The committees?

Mr. BUMPERS. That is close enough. So, the $699 million we are appropriating, under current law, the appropriate agencies, the Forest Service or the Department of the Interior, would have the right to spend other funds unrelated to Headwaters Forest and the New World Mine to make the normal kinds of purchases that they have always made; is that correct?