Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Senator very much. I do not want to take any more time of the Senator.

Mr. BUMPERS

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

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, we discussed this for just a moment the other day in the full Appropriations Committee, but here is my concern. I want to voice those concerns both for the Record and for a response by the chairman of the subcommittee dealing with weapons activities. Now, for the Record and people who read it and may not know, the Energy Department not only tries to develop solar energy and better ways to explore for oil and gas and that sort of thing, the Energy Department is also charged with the responsibility of developing and maintaining our nuclear weapons. They build them, they stockpile them, they guarantee to the people of this country their safety and reliability. They guarantee the safety of them for our benefit; they guarantee the reliability of them for the benefit of the Defense Department which is going to put these nuclear weapons on submarines, missiles, and so on. But I have been concerned about the amount of money we are spending on that. What I wanted to do was to engage the chairman in a discussion of why we are spending the kind of money we are on this project. For example, this year, 1997, the year we are in right now, we are spending somewhere around $120 million to $200 million more on the so- called DOE weapons activities account than we did in 1996. Senator Harkin and I offered an amendment last year to strike that or to lower it. I forget exactly how the amendment read, but we tried to cut this last year, as the chairman will recall. We got 37 votes. You know, I am tired of jousting with windmills around here. I have enough sense to know when you are going to prevail, when you have a fighting chance and when you do not. But in any event, this year the President requested--these figures blow your mind--the President requested $4.044 billion for this so- called DOE weapons activities account--$4.044 billion. And this bill contains $258 million more than the President requested. This is a very arcane account, very difficult for laymen to understand. I must say, I am a layman from the standpoint of the complexities of testing or trying to make sure that our weapons stockpile is safe and reliable. I am a layman in that regard. I am not a layman in regard to money. I understand that $258 million is a lot of money. When we appropriate $258 million more than the President requested--and the President asked for a fairly substantial increase-- when we go above that by $258 million, then I think I am within my right and, as a matter of fact, my duty to raise the question of why we are spending this much money when you consider the fact that there is no Soviet Union. They do not exist anymore, and so far as I know, they do not represent a nuclear threat to this country at this point and, hopefully, never will again. By the same token, Mr. President, we do not represent a nuclear threat to the people of Russia today. If I had asked this question--I do not want to go too far afield from the specifics of what I want the chairman to address, but I daresay, in 1987, for example--the Soviet Union essentially folded in 1990, 1991; and for all the years after World War II until that point, the defense budget was driven, driven almost exclusively, by the threat of the Soviet Union. I daresay, if I had asked any Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during that period, from 1947 to 1948 until 1990, how much could we cut the defense budget if the Soviet Union suddenly went away, I would guess that the smallest number I would have gotten would have been $50 billion and the maximum number at least $100 billion. I am talking about from generals and admirals. So, all of a sudden, here we are 7 years after the demise of the Soviet Union, and the defense budget we approved in the authorization bill that we just passed yesterday is $268 billion. Now, I voted for it--but I felt it was way too much money--because there were some things in it that I thought were fairly important, and we are always trying to balance things. Anybody can pick one thing out of a bill they do not like and vote no. I dislike this so much I am tempted to vote against energy and water, but I am not going to vote against the bill because there are a lot of good things in it. I am not going to accord, indulge, myself the luxury of saying, simply because there are half a dozen things in there I object to I am not going to vote for it. There are all sorts of water projects and energy things that are very important to me. This is about a $21 billion bill. I am not objecting to the $4 billion in weapons development. I am only objecting to what I consider excessive increases. Now, having said all of that to the Senate, I am a strong believer in the test ban treaty. The Senator from Nevada may correct me on this, but I believe 1993 was the last year we had underground tests of nuclear weapons in Nevada. When we quit testing in Nevada, I considered that a hallelujah day in this country. I had been fighting for a long time, even before the Soviet Union disappeared, to stop nuclear testing, underground testing, in Nevada. I thought it was senseless. I thought there must be other ways that we could test and determine the reliability of weapons without actually setting off those explosions. Mr. President, here we are now. We are still talking about a comprehensive test ban treaty, which I strongly favor. We do not have it. There are a lot of people in this body who would not vote for it if the Russians unilaterally disarmed tomorrow. But I happen to think it would take us a long way further than we are right now down the path toward the kinds of, what shall I say, comfort and good feeling we have about the future of nuclear weapons. So, Mr. President, when I look at these figures, this $4.302 billion account, which is $258 million more than the President requested, considerably more, over $300 million more than the House bill provides--let me repeat that. While we are at $4.302 billion, the House is at $3.943 billion, or $350-plus million less than the Senate; and both the House and Senate authorizing bills are less--are less--than the Senate appropriations bill which we are considering on the floor at this moment. So, Mr. President, I intended to offer this amendment as much as for any other reason to engage the distinguished Senator from New Mexico in a colloquy and let him explain. I know he has an explanation. He is very knowledgeable on these things. Let him explain to the Senate why these rather unusual increases, when everybody else is taking a hit-- there are a lot of water projects in this bill that he could not fund because they do not have the money to do it. Of course you couldn't. Before I finish, I ask the Senator from New Mexico, do the firewalls that we have in place apply to the Department of Energy's defense activities?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I agree with my colleague, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. I don't think it would be appropriate for the Senate to take a position on the issue of liability. That is for the courts to decide.

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me say, the $268 billion defense authorization bill we passed last evening, does that include the roughly $17 billion in this bill for nuclear weapons?

Mr. BUMPERS. I think $17 billion is the right figure, roughly $17 billion in nuclear, is there not, in the bill?

Mr. BUMPERS. I would be pleased to join the subcommittee chairman in a colloquy.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, let me say to both the Senator from New Mexico and to the Senator from Nevada, for whom I have the utmost respect and friendship, that I do not disagree with very much of anything either of them just got through saying. And they said it very well. I would like to say to the Senator from Nevada that that was indeed a courageous vote when he voted for the nuclear freeze, particularly as the Senator from Nevada. It was a very courageous vote. But, as he knows, correct votes around here are often very courageous. Sometimes we lose Senators because they cast too many courageous votes. It doesn't happen very often. Probably it ought to happen more often than it does. But, in any event, I compliment him on that. I have always been in support of the nuclear freeze. I have been for 2\1/2\ years standing at this desk back here talking about the insanity of the number of nuclear weapons in both our stockpile and the Soviet Union's, now Russia's, stockpile when both countries always had hundreds of times more weapons than it would take to destroy the planet. So I have fought with some small measure of success to bring some sanity to the whole thing. I just close out by this question that, as I say, troubles me. And the reason that I came over here to offer this amendment to this bill which we are now debating, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill, is that it contains $4.302 billion for nuclear weapons, for weapons activities, and the uses, which the Senators have described, to provide for the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile. Nobody would question that for a moment. I mean we have enough problems about how we are going to dispose of all of this stuff. That is one of hottest debates we have had so far in the Senate: How we are going to get rid of nuclear materials. But here we have a $4.302 billion bill. And this is the thing that causes me some considerable concern: that it is $284 million above what the Senate authorizing committee just authorized yesterday. When I first came here, and up until recently, you could not appropriate more money than the authorizing committee authorized. And we are reaching the point where we don't need authorizing committees anymore because we routinely exceed what they recommend. So this bill is $284 million above the Senate authorized amount, $258 million more than the President recommended, $336 million more than the House authorized, and $359 million more than the House Appropriations Committee approved. Here are three authorizations, plus the President's request. And the President's request is supposed to reflect what DOD, the Defense Department, wants. We don't separate the two. When we talk about the President's request, we are speaking for the Defense Department. Here we are appropriating $258 million more than the President and DOD asked for. So here we are $250 million-plus above everybody--the President, the authorizing committee, the House authorizing committee, and the House Appropriations Committee. So I know the Senator can understand why that piqued my curiosity. I would be delighted to yield the floor to the Senator, if he would like to respond to that. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, is there anything pending? What is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. BUMPERS. OK.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I have the utmost respect for both managers of this bill, the chairman and ranking member. Let me just say that the Senator brought this up. I deliberately did not mention Sandia and Los Alamos and the fact that Nevada receives a substantial part of this money because I don't really care where the money is spent. This is an issue to me that transcends the parochial interests of jobs. It is not that that isn't important to the Senator. Of course it is. It is important to me when I am fighting for something for my State. But, as I say, there is something here that transcends that; that is, how much money we are spending on this. I tell you that I share the Senator's concern for the same reasons that the Senator stated. My only concern is whether or not we are appropriating way too much money to accomplish what is, indeed, a very, very legitimate end. Mr. President, I withdraw my amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. So $11.8 billion. Is that all in the $268 billion authorization bill?

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me close with one observation, because I did not have the correct figure a while ago. Last year's bill, last year's Senate energy and water bill, the same bill we have on the floor right now, provided $270 million more than the President asked for and $300 million more than the House provided. So we had $270 million more last year than the President requested and $258 million more this year than the President requested. That is well over half a billion dollars in 2 years, as I say, when everybody else has suffered. So I ask the Senator from New Mexico if he would care to respond to my complaints about what I consider excessive increases in the DOE weapons development activities.

Mr. BUMPERS. I wish you would do that. (Mr. GREGG assumed the chair.)

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I move to lay that on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, this is an amendment that Senator Coats and I have been talking to other Senators about. I think it is agreed to by both sides now. It simply says, regarding the F-22 fighter plane, the day before yesterday the Air Force said they would build the F-22 fighter, 339 planes, for $43 billion. We have spent so far a little over $18 billion in research and development of that plane. Senator Coats, in the Armed Services Committee, got a provision put in that $18 billion--they have not spent that much yet but that is what is anticipated to be spent on research and development. Senator Coats put an amendment in the bill to make that a cap, $18 billion. This amendment would put a $43 billion cap on the production of 339 airplanes. As I say, that simply says exactly what the Air Force says it would take to do it. I think it is a very healthy amendment. I think it is one that serves the taxpayers well, will serve us well and the contractors well. It is a commitment they are making and we are simply codifying that in this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the present amendment be temporarily laid aside.

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

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

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

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Could the Senator say about how long he anticipates speaking on his amendment?

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Senator.