Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. The Senator from Nevada is incorrect. My amendment does not violate the Constitution and it deserves an up or down vote. What is the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from Alaska so afraid of?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be laid aside and that the Senate proceed to the committee amendment beginning on page 123, line 9.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Louisiana, Senator Landrieu, be added as a cosponsor to the amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. We are prepared to vote, Mr. President.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my distinguished colleague and friend from Montana, Senator Baucus, be recognized for 10 minutes, without my losing the right to the floor, and that I immediately be recognized following the conclusion of his remarks.

Mr. BUMPERS. That's the reason they are paying royalties to private interests.

Mr. BUMPERS. Absolutely.

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me say, first of all, that I would have asked for a division, incidentally, before the point of order was made if I had had the chance. Let me make a parliamentary inquiry. Division is not in order after the point of order is made, is that correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BUMPERS. I was getting ready to yield the floor. I want to say in closing, I know a lot of people would like to get out of here as early as they can tonight. I don't intend to belabor this. I said mostly what I want to say. I may respond to a few things that are said, so I am going to turn it over to my friends from the West and let them respond for a while, and then hopefully we can get into a time agreement after four or five speakers have spoken. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. They got it for $35----

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me say to my colleagues that I didn't get a chance to ask for a division. So, if you want to stand on ceremony, if you want to go home and tell the folks back home why you voted to continue giving billions of dollars worth of gold and silver away every year because of this little fine, distinguished point, you go ahead and do that. Be my guest. If you are looking for something to hang your hat on even though you would be entirely incorrect, you can do it. Do you know something else? The Senator from Alaska, the Senator from Nevada, the Senator from Idaho, and others who introduced this bill in this Senate, they have a royalty provision in their bill. That bill, like the bills I introduced, has been referred to the Senate Energy Committee, not the Finance Committee. Obviously my amendment does not contain a tax. So we raise this little fine diversionary point and we hope that people will forget that, since 1872, 243 billion dollars' worth of their property has been expropriated by the biggest corporations in the world--not in America, in the world. So, candidate, when you see a 30- second spot next year saying, ``He voted to continue this foul, outrageous, egregious practice, and the landowners of this country, the taxpayers who own it, you tax them for everything.'' How many times during the budget debate did I hear the cries about the ``poor, taxed American taxpayer?'' Go home and tell that taxpayer you were just kidding. If you weren't kidding, why are you voting to continue to give billions of dollars worth of their property away every year? The Senator from Alaska says, ``If you pass the Bumpers amendment, you are going to drive all these mining companies offshore.'' Do you know what my response to that is? If all you want to do, Stillwater Mining Co., is take 38 billion dollars' worth of platinum off of 2,000 acres of land in Montana and give us $10,000 back for your $38 billion, so long, good riddance. What on Earth are we thinking about in this body? So, Mr. President, let me make this point one more time because I promise you there is going to be a lot of 30-second spots next year on this issue. You cannot duck this one forever. You cannot campaign back home on the finely crafted point of order made by the Senator from Washington that this doesn't belong in this bill and the House of Representatives will blue slip it. Since when did that become a big item around here? If you are looking for something to hang your hat on, you go ahead; you vote for the point of order and then go home next fall, and when you are in a debate with your opponent and he says, ``He has voted time and again to give away these billions of dollars of resources that belong to you, the American people for nothing; he is willing to make the oil companies pay 12.5 percent royalty, make the gas companies pay a 12.5 percent royalty, is willing to make the coal operators pay a 12.5 percent royalty, or an 8 percent royalty for underground mining, but when it comes to gold and silver, he gets lockjaw, just can't get it out of the chute.'' You answer that when your opponent hits you with that and tells you that the Federal Government would have received $12 billion in royalties since 1872 for patented land alone.

Mr. BUMPERS. If that is true, why don't they just come in and say, ``Look, we bought this land that had already been developed by somebody else who patented it and it is not fair for us to take this because it originally belonged to landowners and we want to pay a royalty on it.'' Would that be fair?

Mr. BUMPERS. Does the Senator realize that the land on which they are paying 18 percent royalty was formerly Federal land and was patented by a totally different person and they bought it, they bought it from somebody else who paid the Federal Government either $2.50 an acre or $5 an acre? They are paying him, not the Federal Government. You see, if they had been smart enough to get a patent before this other fellow did, they would not have had to pay anything. Now they are paying somebody else who patented the land 18 percent, but if they had gotten the patent from the Federal Government, they wouldn't have had to pay a penny. Indeed, Senator, I don't want to make too much light of your argument, but I don't even know what your answer is. I still do not understand why it is they are willing to pay 18 percent royalty to a guy who patented the land from the Federal Government. It is now private land because he bought it for $2.50 an acre. They are willing to pay him 18 percent royalty but the other lands--it is a part of the same lode of gold that they got a patent on from the Federal Government. They are not willing to pay one farthing, and the reason they are not willing to, I say to the Senator, you and I both know the answer, they got a bird nest on the ground.

Mr. BUMPERS. The Senator does not have the option of doing that. He is going to be voting on the amendment, period. He is going to be voting on the point of order raised by the Senator from Washington.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, let me first of all say my opposition to my colleague's amendment is difficult for me. I have the utmost respect for him. We have a fine working relationship. Occasionally we have a disagreement, as on this amendment. I know he feels very strongly about it. My interests in the wilderness areas and the rivers of this country go back to the time when I was Governor of the State of Arkansas. Long before Congress considered wilderness legislation, Arkansas was considering it. I must confess before God and everybody that my wilderness proposal was the only substantive legislation I lost or was unable to pass in my first term as Governor. It was considered a little bit of a radical concept. Now, of course, we have millions and millions of acres in the national forests and State forests set aside for wilderness areas. It was a concept whose time had not come in 1971. I remember one legislator said, ``Who wants a wilderness? If you want one, go grow one.'' That is how shallow the thinking was about wilderness back then. Fortunately, I was able to designate a few rivers as scenic rivers. I am pleased we were able to do that. I am a strong believer in preserving everything that has any aesthetic or cultural value. Now, as I see this proposal, not my colleague's proposal, but as I see what the President is proposing, I just do not understand, frankly, the opposition. We have had some calls in our office suggesting that this is a United Nations plot to take over private property. Well, I wouldn't be standing here saying that the President's idea is a good one if I thought for a minute it was going to take people's property away from them, that there was some kind of cabal or conspiracy to do such a thing as that. I guess that you could compare this to a scenic highway. In Arkansas we designate scenic highways in our State. You know why we do that? To entice tourists to drive on those scenic highways. You drive a few miles west of Washington, DC, and all you can see are signs saying ``Scenic Highways.'' I have never heard any outcry from anybody in my State opposing scenic highways. We love them. They do wonders for the Arkansas tourist industry. If I understand the proposal on the heritage rivers, it is designed so that the President would have to be told or he would have to be requested by the people in the local community that they want to declare their river an American heritage river. If he did it, it would be an honorary designation more than anything else. The only time any Federal resources would be committed to it would be if the local community decided that they wanted to start a new project along the river, as we have done in Little Rock, AR, with a beautiful new park. In 1972, I attended a Southern Governors' Conference in Austin, TX. We always have a big dinner at the close of those things. Lady Bird Johnson was my seatmate at dinner. I had never met her before. She is a very gracious, charming woman. The Lady Bird Johnson Park out here is a real tribute to her. She told me, ``Governor Bumpers, I was in Little Rock about 2 weeks ago and I was staying in a brandnew hotel. I looked out my window toward the river and there was the county jail and a sand and gravel operation.'' She said, ``I believe that Little Rock is the only city in the world on a major river that doesn't have a riverfront park that utilizes the beauty of the river and builds on the beauty of that river.'' I came back and reported that to the city fathers in Little Rock. It was rather embarrassing when she brought it to my attention. To make a long story short, we now have one of the most magnificent riverfront parks in Little Rock, AR, today, of any State in the Nation. We have a week-long Riverfest festival which everybody in Arkansas takes great pride in. There is nothing underhanded or sinister in this proposal. The President is not asking for legislative authority. He is simply saying, if the community of Little Rock came to him and said, ``We want this river in our State declared an American heritage river,'' he could proclaim it, like giving them a plaque. Everybody in this body has 1,000 plaques. What is wrong with that, providing recognition to aesthetic values in this rather meager way? I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, more than a year ago I addressed this body to tell my colleagues about a proposed gold mine that posed a major threat to Yellowstone National Park. Crown Butte Mining, Inc. proposed to construct a 72-acre impoundment area with a dam that would be somewhere between 75 and 100 feet high, which would have a plastic lining on the bottom and some sort of a cap on top to keep oxygen away from the 5.5 million tons of tailings from the mining operation that would go into this impoundment area. The purpose of keeping the oxygen away from it is to keep the waste from turning into sulfuric acid. This earthfill dam would be located high about Yellowstone National Park and the Yellowstone River, in one of the most seismically active, earthquake-prone areas of the country. An area where it snows thirty feet a year. I introduced a bill at the time to withdraw Federal lands from around that mine from further disposal under the mining laws, and to draw attention to this problem. I said at that time that my bill would not legally stop Crown Butte from proceeding with the mine, but that I hoped my bill would discourage them and dissuade them from doing it. I said that I hoped that Crown Butte, as good corporate citizens, would not force the issue and leave us to wonder whether or not this 5.5 million tons of tailings that they proposed to impound there could possibly break loose and pollute the Clarks Fort and Soda Butte Creek, which flows right into Yellowstone National Park. To their credit, Crown Butte has not proceeded. They recognized that the public wanted to protect Yellowstone, and they were going to have to overcome some fairly significant environmental problems. And they reached an agreement with the administration and with local conservation groups that had sued them, and they agreed to let the United States buy out their interest. They reached that agreement more than a year ago, and the only thing that is required for it to be consummated--for Yellowstone to be protected from this threat and for the company to receive what they believe is fair compensation--is for us to fund that agreement in this bill. The Interior Appropriations bill includes $65 million for this purpose. So we have the money to accomplish this goal of protecting Yellowstone National Park. Unfortunately, as the bill currently stands, it requires further legislation for the administration to actually use the money for that purpose. I hope we dispense with that requirement. The question is simple--do we protect Yellowstone National Park through an agreement which is supported by both the mining company and the National Park Service, and which involves paying the mining company the appraised value of its property? Or do we need to kick this around for another two years, and reward the mining company for being a responsible corporate citizen by saying, ``We've got to think more about this''? As the ranking minority Member of the Senate Energy Committee, I am very sensitive to that Committee's responsibilities. But it is quite clear that no new law is required for this agreement to be consummated. It involves purchasing private inholdings in a National Forest-- something the Interior Appropriations Committee has funded in hundreds of places over the past several years on the authority of existing law. The question is simple. Do we take the opportunity to save Yellowstone, or throw it away? I went to Yellowstone when I was 12 years old--breathtaking. I never forgot any part of it, the geysers, the magnificent waterfalls--all of it. Here is the first national park in America. Yellowstone, a crown jewel. To allow a huge industrial development generating hundreds of tons of highly acidic mine waste to threaten to destroy the first national park in America, one of the real crown jewels of the world, not just America, is absolutely unacceptable. Many times we find that we in this chamber can't agree on some proposal to protect environmental values because there is another side, and a conflict. Here there is no other side. The mining company wants to solve this problem. The conservation community wants to solve this problem. I hope that when we take this matter up in conference, we will drop this requirement for further legislation and simply solve the problem.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be laid aside and the Senate proceed to the committee amendment beginning on line 9, page 123 of the bill.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, this amendment has not only been agreed to, it has been microscopically fly-specked by all of the parties for the past 24 hours. I urge its adoption.

Mr. BUMPERS. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.