Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I am prepared to yield back the remainder of my time if the Senator from Alaska is also.

Mr. BUMPERS. But I also understand the Federal share of that will be somewhere between 87 and 94 percent. You think with that kind of money and what you can do--if you just take the Federal share, cut Alaska out, take the 87 percent of whatever it is going to cost to build the road and establish a trust fund. I promise you, you will have doctors, you will have doctors and anybody you want, with the income from such a trust fund. But getting back to where I was a moment ago, you can improve the medical facilities there. You can consider Hovercraft. Hovercraft is not dependent on fog. You do not have to worry about fog conditions. A Hovercraft is one of the alternatives that the state is studying. Sometimes the waves may be too volatile to use Hovercraft. That is why a combination of various alternatives may be necessary. There is a man in Alaska named Dr. Peter Mjos who has written a letter. Dr. Mjos apparently is head of the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. It is a family practice center. He says: I've been asked, as the Eastern Aleutian Tribes Medical Director, to comment on the proposed King Cove to Cold Bay road. The primary concern which has been raised is that of safely evacuating individuals with medical emergencies. Several concerns come to mind. On the surface, so to speak, a road would appear to be the safest and easiest option, however, the safety issue surrounding medi-vacs arises primarily because of the extremely hazardous meteorologic conditions which occur during an emergency. While flying is obviously potentially hazardous-- And listen to this-- The proposed road in an Aleutian storm or blizzard could be [just] as equally as hazardous when one considers nearly zero visibility, nonexistence of other traffic over a [long] distance of very isolated country, and, of course, the ever- present winter dangers of avalanches. What Dr. Mjos is saying is that a road is not a 100-percent solution either. There will be times when you will not be able to use the road-- a lot of ice, a lot of snow, avalanches in Alaska. He goes on to say: Of much greater expediency, then, I would strongly recommend several measures which would first, markedly decrease the number of medi-vacs and second, would probably be more reliable in the event of emergencies necessitating medi-vacs. Foremost would be the implementation of a state of the art telemedicine system. My chief of staff here in Washington told me one time about her father when he was a young man suffered a head injury. And they took him to Fort Smith, AR, which was about 50 or 60 miles away. There were no neurosurgeons in Fort Smith, AR, so a family doctor there--or maybe he was a general surgeon; I do not know--they got a doctor in Oklahoma City on the phone, and this surgeon in Fort Smith held the phone up to his ear, and they operated on her father according to the way this neurosurgeon in Oklahoma City was telling him to do it. Telemedicine is a lot more advanced than that today, but I use that just as an illustration to say sometimes telemedicine works. Another option which would circumvent the hazards of avalanches and isolated highway transportation would be that of a state of the art ferry system which could operate in virtually any climatic weather conditions. This would of course obviate a drive on, drive off ferry with adequate protection from unruly seas. This is from a doctor who is the Eastern Aleutian Tribes Medical Director. Here is a letter from Myron P. Naneng, Sr., who is President of the Association of Village Council Presidents. He is writing to Chairman Don Young over in the House. Dear Chairman Young: After careful examination of H.R. 2259-- Essentially the same bill we are debating here-- the King Cove Health and Safety Act of 1997, the Association of Village Council Presidents, Inc. Waterfowl Conservation Committee would like to request to be put on the record of opposing such legislation. The bill provides for a transfer of land interests in order to facilitate surface transportation between the cities of Cold Bay and King Cove. Although we empathize with the community of King Cove's difficulty with safe air transportation to Anchorage, we find that the proposed road would seriously interfere in our endeavors to resuscitate our migratory bird populations. . . And he goes on. Mr. President, I offer these things simply because the Senator from Alaska is correct. I have never been to Cold Bay or King Cove, either one. But apparently people who live there and who know the situation have been, and they oppose it. One of the most interesting things I have run across is this. No. 1-- the Senator from Montana has already covered this, and at the expense of being repetitious--Penn Air, the primary aircarrier between King Cove and Cold Bay, makes 1,800 one-way flights between King Cove and Cold Bay each year. That is 900 round trips. You divide that by 365, and that is about 2 1/3 round trips a day that Pen Air makes between King Cove and Cold Bay. Listen to this. Incidentally, three Pen Air flights have resulted in accidents in 20 years. Little Rock, AK, does not have a safety record that compares with that. There were 20 medevacs from King Cove between January 1996 and June 1997. That is roughly a year and a half--20 medevacs. There was a delay for 5 of the 20; and of the 5 that were delayed, 4 of them were delayed by no more than 4 hours; and the 5th was successfully completed the next day. You hear a lot about 11 fatalities between 1981 and 1997; 11 fatalities in that 16-year period. Six of the fatalities were the result of a plane that was en route from Kodiak that crashed into the mountain. I am going to tell you, flying around Alaska is no fun, under the best of conditions. When I was in Alaska they kept me scared to death-- the bush pilots. We are talking about a 16-year period; 11 fatalities, and 6 of those from a plane that crashed coming from Kodiak, coming from an island the opposite side of King Cove from Cold Bay. A road between King Cove and Cold Bay would not have prevented that. Another incident where one person was killed--this takes care of 7 of the 11 over a 16-year period--was by a pilot who flew within a complete whiteout condition after being warned not to do it. Mr. President, I am not sure of the statistics involving who died and how trying to get from King Cove to Cold Bay. I want to say to my friend from Alaska that after all the studies are done and it is determined that there is nothing else that is even feasible except building this road, then I will rethink my position. I don't blame the two Senators from Alaska for trying to honor the request of the people in their State on this. One thing that has not been talked about is helicopters. You can buy a regular ambulance helicopter for $4.7 million brand new; you can buy one used for $1.5 million. They can always operate safer, and more often, than fixed-wing aircraft in bad weather. They are used consistently by North Slope Borough Search and Rescue. I won't belabor this any further except to say we have studies ongoing by the Department of Transportation in Alaska. We ought to at least show them the courtesy of letting them report, and then make up our mind after we have seen a detailed study. We should not precipitously, here on the floor of the Senate, build the first road in a wilderness in the history of the country without at least giving it more than a passing thought. I would be willing to accept the amendment of the Senator from Alaska and we can just vote up or down on the bill if that is agreeable with him, if it is agreeable with some of my colleagues. I don't know how strongly my good friend from Massachusetts feels, and I will be happy to yield to him in a moment. Finally, in my opinion--I have been wrong before in my opinions, but this one is, I think, fairly safe--in my opinion, this bill will be vetoed. I don't know of anything, other than the Republican tax bill, that the President feels more strongly about than this bill. The most current information is that if it were presented to the President, his senior advisers would recommend he veto the bill. This is one of those bills, if you present it, it looks like you are being terribly cruel, until you examine it very carefully and see all of the information. I urge the President to veto the bill. It will be a very tough bill to veto. I don't know whether we can uphold the veto or not. I don't know how many votes we will get here this afternoon. He is absolutely determined to veto this bill. It is a legitimate thing to talk about, and I hope that the studies will show some alternate method of alleviating the problem other than building a road through the wilderness for the first time. I yield the Senator from Massachusetts such time as he may consume within the limits I have left. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. BUMPERS. Of course. I understand the road will be built by the State of Alaska.

Mr. BUMPERS. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, this is a very difficult, a very difficult undertaking for me for a number of reasons. No. 1, my profound and unrestrained respect for the two Senators from Alaska who obviously feel very strongly about the issue. It gives me no pleasure to be on the other side. I sit as ranking member on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee where Senator Murkowski is chairman. I have been on Appropriations for 22 years where Senator Stevens is chairman. They are no different from any other Senators of the U.S. Senate who, when they have a problem, have no hesitancy about doing everything they can to solve it for their people. That is what we are all here for, to serve our people. So it is with considerable regret that I find myself feeling compelled, however, to oppose the amendment and the bill. Let me say, also, that lack of health care is not just peculiar to Alaska. I grew up in a community of 851 souls where we sometimes had one doctor but most of the time we had none. My mother and father moved from a mountaintop farm into this little community of 851 people because my brother, who died before I was born--and who obviously, being firstborn, was the apple of my mother's eye--but we moved because he died for lack of any medical care. That was a long time ago. But my mother told me many times that she told my father, ``We are moving off this mountaintop. I am not going to live here and watch my babies die, one at a time, for lack of medical care.'' I grew up with that story, so I grew up always trying to improve medical care in my little hometown. Finally, after I went back there to practice law, we were able to obtain one doctor. We built him a clinic. We fed him, we did everything in the world he asked us to do, and then he was killed in a car wreck, and there we were, left without a doctor again. It was only 30 minutes from a hospital, but if you are having a heart attack, that is too long. If you are having a massive heart attack, 30 minutes is too long. So, as I say, I grew up knowing what it was like not to have any medical care. We seldom had a doctor in our hometown. I can remember-- and I have said this on the floor before--that growing up during the Depression was a tough enough time. You know, that is one of the reasons I have always been an unabashed social liberal, and the reason I must say I resent so many people who use the term ``liberal'' as a denigrating term. I often want to say, what is it about liberalism that you hate? Which one of these programs that are considered liberal--for example, Medicare--would you repeal today? Or REA? Student loans? Or Pell grants? Or the ability to know that you are drinking pure and clean water? Or the ability to know that you are eating food that has been prepared under the most sanitary conditions? The list goes on and on and on and on of those things that were all considered liberal at the time. But you couldn't get anybody to go back to the poll tax system in the South. And I remember people in my State thought that was the end of the world as we knew it, when people were allowed to vote free, didn't have to pay a dollar for a poll tax. Five black women came into my office 2 years ago, each one having been a victim of cancer of the breast. And I sat literally weeping with those five women, some of whom were going to make it and some of whom were not--but who said that they did not go to the doctor when they first felt the lump because they knew the doctor would either turn them down or tell them that they had no medical insurance. What if they did have cancer, they knew they were not going to be cared for. That was in 1996. This is not when I was a child during the Depression. This was 2 years ago. They were there to lobby me on behalf of a program they didn't need to lobby me on. I was already for it. But here these people were, 50 to 100 miles from Memphis and the finest hospitals in America--and I will not give you the name of the town they came from or where they had been denied health care. All I am saying is a lot of people are denied health care because of race. Others are denied health care because they don't have any insurance--45 million of them. They are not necessarily denied health care simply because they don't have insurance, but oftentimes that is the case. Just as an aside, not particularly applicable to this debate, I remember every summer when people died of typhoid fever in my hometown because the outhouse was just about 20 steps away from the water well and we did not make the connection. But, you know, another one of those old liberal programs was free vaccinations. When I was in school we got smallpox, typhoid and I forget the other shot. We always got those at the school--free. The county health nurse administered the shots. That is what some people called the good old days. They weren't good old days to me. Will Rogers once said, ``The good old days ain't what they used to be, and they never was.'' Well, one of the most difficult things I faced as Governor of my State was a highly charged issue of whether or not Lee County, AR, the third poorest county in America, would get an OEO grant. Some of you are old enough to remember the Office of Economic Opportunity, another one of those liberal programs that I remember President Nixon put a man in charge, specifically, to dismantle it. But there was a $1 million grant for a clinic in Lee County, AR, as I said, one of the poorest counties in America. It was designed to provide health care for African Americans who had no place to go, and it became a black/white issue. They got the money if I, as Governor, signed off on it, and they didn't get the money if I didn't sign off on it. The first thing you know, a little violence broke out and I had to send about 15 to 20 State Troopers into that town for about 4 or 5 days to restore and maintain the peace. Those were very trying times. That sounds anachronistic today, but that has been a short 27 years ago. I did something that I knew was right that was very troublesome. I signed the grant and, if you pardon the expression, all hell broke loose in that town. It was the county seat. To shorten the story, today it is the primary health care center for everybody in that county. An organization in New York about 2 weeks ago gave that clinic a $50,000 mobile van in order to keep people from coming in all the time. The clinic will take the van around a three-county area. They will let people know when it is coming. They will immunize children and so on. Betty, who is not only ``secretary of peace,'' but also has been very active, she and Mrs. Carter, in immunizing all the children in this country, went down for the presentation of this van to that same clinic that got the $1 million grant 27 years ago. Now, as I say, it is the primary health care center for the entire county, black and white. I say those things to preface my remarks about this issue. There isn't any question, nor does anybody I know of who opposes the amendment and the bill--there isn't any question about the problem. Certainly the two Senators from Alaska understand these things in Alaska, so far as they are concerned, much better than I do. I understand, being a southerner from a relatively poor State, that a lot of people are deprived of health care for totally different reasons, and that is the reason I prefaced my remarks. Here we are talking about a 30-mile road which, incidentally, as I understand it, will cost in the vicinity of $25 million to $30 million, and 8 of the 11 miles that go through the national wildlife refuge is through a wilderness area. As the senior Senator from Alaska said, the State of Alaska has some 40 million acres of wilderness areas, so what on Earth are you talking about? Eight miles through a wilderness area? It just sounds like such an infinitesimal problem, who can possibly object? Who especially could object after hearing the two Senators from Alaska describe some of the people who died for lack of medical care. The problem I have with it is the bill assumes that the road is the only solution. If I believed it was the only solution, I would be a cosponsor of the amendment. But there is another imperative involved in it, and the Senator from Montana, who has performed yeoman service on this amendment today, has already pointed it out. And that is, building a road through wilderness in Alaska, no matter how short or how long, will be the first time in this Nation that we have deliberately authorized building a road through a wilderness area. Once you start down that road, nobody knows where it is going to end. I can tell you that probably 9 out of 10 people in my State, if you just present it to them as health care for people, they say, ``I don't understand the Government and the wilderness; that wilderness stuff never made much sense to me anyway.'' It makes a lot of sense to me for a simple reason, and I had to come to the U.S. Senate before I really honed my conscience and my awareness of the fact that God just gave us one planet. He didn't say go ahead and throw all the greenhouse gases you can into the atmosphere or chlorofluorocarbons to destroy the ozone layer and I will give you another one after you destroy the ozone layer and after you bring on global warming, with all the disastrous consequences. When you get through mining all the land and leaving all those wonderful environmental disasters, God didn't say, ``I'll give you another one and give you a second chance to see if you can do better next time.'' No, we only get one, and when you do irreversible damage to this planet, you are destroying your children's and your grandchildren's heritage and their future, and you do it mindlessly while standing on the floor of the U.S. Senate talking about education and health care and everything else to indicate how much you love your children. When it gets to something as arcane as building a road through a wilderness, who cares? But when you combine thousands of those little ``who cares?'' projects, the first thing you know, you have done a tremendous amount of damage. My staff gave me a thick briefing book, and I went through a good portion of it, but I guess I finally have to say the precedent worries me a lot. Once you start this, where do you stop? We have never done it before, and we ought not to start now. No. 2, there are a lot of alternatives that even the State of Alaska is now studying. The Transportation Department of Alaska is studying what some of the options are to solving this problem, which ones would be the best, most affordable, et cetera. The State of Alaska has taken no position on this, at least that is my understanding. Why are we not talking about establishing some medical facilities in King Cove? Why are we not talking about the use of Hovercraft? Senator Stevens got a provision put in the transportation bill for $142 million for new ferries in Alaska, and he got a provision put in the transportation bill to build a causeway to solve the very problem we are talking about here today. I don't know what happened with that. I understand there was some dissension in the ranks over there about the advisability of a causeway. I don't know. That even might be one of the solutions to this. There is an Indian Health Service in King Cove. We appropriate money every year in the Interior appropriations bill, in 1996 to the tune of $380,000 to that facility. Before we spend $30 million to build a road, why not just put $1 million into the health service facility? Why not take the $30 million and put it in a trust fund and build a hospital, and then invite doctors up there and pay them $200,000, $300,000 a year to live there? That would be infinitely better than spending $27 million to $30 million on this road, 87 to 94 percent of which Uncle Sugar will pick up the tab.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield the Senator from Montana such time as he may consume.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield the Senator from Massachusetts 30 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. Seventy-four minutes?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Virginia for making that request. I will be very brief. First, I compliment the Senator from Virginia. I came here to speak on another subject, but his remarks on what is the current topic about military readiness were very topical and timely. He made one very salient point that needs to be reinforced, and I would just like to lend my support because, as you know, I will not be here next year, and I regret it for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is because I won't be here for the debate about just how bad off our Defense Department is on readiness, No. 1. No. 2, the question keeps coming back to me on why, if $270 billion, which is this year's defense budget--or maybe that is the amount we appropriated for next year, $270 billion--if that isn't enough when you consider the fact that that is more than all the defense expenditures of the rest of the world and twice as much as China and Russia and the so-called seven or eight rogue nations, you have to ask yourself, what are we doing with that $270 billion? When you add NATO to it, NATO and the United States combined spend well over twice as much as the rest of the world combined. I wish I was going to be here for this so-called readiness debate. I have watched this thing happen about five times since I have been here, where we go along and all of a sudden the Defense Department comes over and says, ``Our readiness is declining; our ability to meet the contingencies that we see are something we are not going to be able to meet with our existing manpower.'' It makes me wonder, because then Senators begin to hear from their constituents back home that the Joint Chiefs have said we are woefully inadequate in this department, woefully inadequate in that department. And among other things, General Shelton pointed out yesterday in the Armed Services Committee that one of the reasons they feel like their readiness is slipping is because they have things imposed on them to the tune of about $4 billion or $5 billion this year they didn't ask for. When you consider the fact that our retention rate of pilots is 27 percent, and we are in the process of building about 700 new F-18s and 339 F-22s, you have to ask yourself, Who is going to fly those planes? If we can't compete with commercial airlines, then we ought to raise the salaries of our pilots. It is absolutely unconscionable that we spend the amount of money that we do--hundreds of thousands of dollars--training pilots only to watch the commercial airlines take them away from us once they have been trained. The only way you are going to overcome that is to change the salaries of pilots so you can retain them. I am like Senator Robb, I will have more to say on this subject later. I really came over to give another brief statement. This is the eighth year I have been trying to kill the space station. Everybody knows that. I only have about 6 more days to speak my mind in the U.S. Senate. I know that everybody is going to be extremely rhapsodic and excited to hear the good news, and that is, since I stood on the floor about 6 months ago and tried to kill the space station once again, the cost of it has only gone up $8.3 billion. We are now headed into the second $100 billion for the space station. You have to bear in mind that that is only if the Russians are ready, for example, with a service module by April of 1999, and even NASA itself says they are not likely to be ready until the fall of 1999. When I tell you that we are soaring past the $25 billion mark right now, and we will probably be at $30 billion by April of next year as best we can project, and you understand that the Russians are not going to be ready with a service module by next April as anticipated, and if it is next fall, just keep adding a billion here and a billion there. Mr. President, all I can do is to tell my children and grandchildren I did my best to stop this thing before it got completely out of control, and I failed miserably. I never received more than 35 votes, maybe 40 at one time. I have to admit, it is extremely gratifying to come over here and tell you, ``I told you so.'' There is just nothing politicians like better than to be proven right. I will be down in Arkansas watching C-SPAN occasionally. Senator Pryor tells me he is so happy now he doesn't even watch C-SPAN anymore. He says sometimes it just ruins his whole day. I will be down there and probably watching C-SPAN as I watch the cost of the space station soar from $100 billion--it is about $104 billion right now--right on up to $150 billion and watch the U.S. Senate put their imprimatur on it and say, ``Sic 'em, tiger; go at it, and we'll just keep spending the money.'' It doesn't make any difference. I can tell you right now it does not matter what the space station winds up costing; we are going to build it. Nobody can tell you why, but we are going to. I will have a little more to say on this the first opportunity tomorrow or Friday. I yield the floor, and I assume we will stand in recess.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I rise today to once again address an issue that I have addressed a number of times here in the U.S. Senate. It deals with mail-order catalog sales. Everybody within earshot of my voice knows what I am talking about because when they come home at night and pick their mail up, they will find mail-order catalogs. At my house, the average is about 6 to 10 mail-order catalogs on a daily basis. You can buy anything under the shining sun. If you save all of those catalogs, sooner or later you will get one to offer you every product that can be bought in any retail house in America. Now, I have two reasons for my strong feelings about this. No. 1, I was a small town Main Street merchant, as well as a practicing lawyer. Most people don't know it, but I was the only lawyer in town--you are listening to the whole South Franklin Bar Association right now--in a little town of 1,200 to 1,500 people. When I got out of law school, I knew I wouldn't be able to make a living practicing law so I bought back a business that my father had owned before he and my mother were tragically killed in an automobile accident. I was in law school in Chicago at the time, and 3 years later when I got out of law school, I had no intention of going back to the small town. I had left Arkansas to go to Chicago law school because I didn't think Arkansas was nearly big enough for me. But because of that and the fact that Mrs. Bumpers' family all lived in this little town, we went home and I bought the hardware, furniture and appliance business that my father had owned, hoping that it would sustain me while I built my law practice. Believe you me, I needed a lot of sustaining while I was building a law practice. People would walk into my office and say, ``Aren't you sort of a lawyer?'' And I would have to grudgingly admit yes, that is exactly what I was--``sort of a lawyer.'' So I speak today as a former retail merchant in a little country town in Arkansas called Charleston. But I also speak as the former Governor of Arkansas where in 1971 I had to raise the income tax because we felt that the sales tax, which is a regressive tax, was already about as high as we could make it. That was quite an undertaking because some of the wealthy people in my State, many years before, had seen to it that the constitution of Arkansas provided that any tax other than a sales tax would require a 75-percent vote of both houses of the legislature. You think about that. If you wanted to raise the sales tax, which affects working people and poor people more than anybody else, it would only require a 51-percent majority; but if you wanted to raise the income tax, which hit the wealthy people, it required a 75-percent vote. I remember it took nine votes in the Arkansas State Senate before we passed an income tax bill. That bill, which raised the marginal rate from 4 to 7 percent, is the thing that made my State--I don't say this to boast, but every economist and every political scientist will tell you that it is the one thing that made Arkansas fairly stable economically thereafter. Do you know something? While it is a very volatile thing, I got a lot of hate mail when I was championing it, but I got about 65 percent of the vote next time I ran, which shows that people are not dumb, if you go to them and explain your actions. You can always trust the American people to do the right thing. Winston Churchill once said, ``You can always depend on the American people to do the right thing once they have explored all the other possibilities.'' The truth of the matter is, when you talk sense to the American people, they respond sensibly. So this problem of mail-order catalog houses is simply this: If you wanted to come into my store and buy a $500 refrigerator, the tax on that was 5 percent, or $25. If you want to order that refrigerator from a mail-order catalog house in another State, there is no $25 tax, no tax of any kind. If you want to buy almost anything under the shining sun, from a toboggan to hunting boots, you can find a mail-order catalog that sells those items. A lot of these companies will tell you in their advertising that there is no sales tax. They tell you ``no sales tax,'' even though, actually, 45 of the 50 States in this country have what is called a ``use tax,'' and that applies to out-of-State purchases. Do you know what the problem with that is? You might say, well, what are you up there shouting and shooting your mouth off about if there is already a use tax in 45 out of 50 States. I will tell you why. It is very simple. The tax is on the purchaser, not the seller. So if I buy that refrigerator and they said ``no sales tax,'' that is a deception. Arkansas has a use tax, which is a tax on anything brought into the State. But the only problem is, it is on me and I don't even know the tax exists. I promise you--I don't know how many people are within earshot of what I am saying, but I guarantee you that precious few of them know there is a use tax on anything they buy from a mail-order catalog house. They don't know it, so they don't pay it. Maine has become so frustrated that they have a provision in their income tax return requiring them to multiply .004 or .0004, by your adjusted gross income and send it in. That is to make up for anything you bought out of a mail-order catalog, whether you bought anything or not. I said, in 1995--the last time I offered this amendment--that I think it is very suspect, from a constitutional standpoint, to tax people on mail-order sales when you didn't buy anything. Yet, Maine has been doing that. A lot of people--for example, Indiana--do a little auditing from time to time. Ten thousand people in Indiana--and 1994 is the latest figures we have--paid some kind of a use tax for buying stuff from mail-order houses in another State. But what they collect is just nothing. In 1994--again, the last year we have figures for--if mail-order catalog houses in this country had collected sales taxes on all the merchandise they sold into these States, they would have paid the States, counties and the cities in the neighborhood of $3 billion. My guess would be that 4 years later, that is in the vicinity of $4 billion-plus, because retail sales have skyrocketed since 1994. But, look, in 1994--as I say, the last time I debated this subject was in 1995--in 1994, my State lost $19.6 million, California lost $482 million, Illinois lost $233 million. That is the reason the National Governors' Conference, National Conference of Mayors, and the National Association of Municipalities favor my amendment. I have a list of the various organizations that support my amendment. I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to have printed in the Record a list of organizations that favor my amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Senator Graham and I are going to offer this amendment, if we get a chance, on this bill. What brought all of this about? Well, first of all, it was about 1967, the Supreme Court, in a decision commonly referred to as the National Bellas Hess case, a big mail-order house. I forget where they are located. The Supreme Court said: You States, you cities, and you counties may not charge a use tax on mail-order sales coming into your State from another State unless that mail-order house has a physical presence in your State. Eddie Bauer used to be just a mail-order house. Now Eddie Bauer has outlets in just about every State in the Nation. For example, if you order something out of the Eddie Bauer catalog and you are a Maryland resident, they will charge you sales tax. You can't buy it without paying the sales tax because they have a physical presence in Maryland. But most of these people like Lands' End and L.L. Bean don't have a physical presence in your State and they don't collect sales taxes. But the Supreme Court said in the National Bellas Hess case, you can't charge sales tax or use tax on mail-order sales because it violates the due process clause, and it is a violation of the interstate commerce clause. That sounds like the end of the story. However, in 1992, the State of North Dakota challenged the Bellas Hess decision. They went to the Supreme Court and said we think the case was wrongly decided, and lo and behold, the Supreme Court agreed with them on 50 percent of it. They said it was no longer a violation of the due process clause for a State to require a mail-order house in another State to collect sales taxes for them. But the Court found that there was still a violation of the interstate commerce clause. The Supreme Court throughout its history has been very, very zealous in making sure that we didn't pass any laws, or that no State passed a law, that interfered with interstate commerce. In that decision 25 years later, Quill versus North Dakota, the Supreme Court said requiring companies to collect use taxes was still a violation of the interstate commerce clause unless Congress gives the states permission to collect these taxes. So that is what I am attempting to do. Senator Wyden is a dear friend, and one of the finest men to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, in my humble opinion. However, his bill prevents the states from passing any taxes on the Internet for a two year period. My amendment would not exempt the Internet. My amendment would make it possible for the states to require out-of-state companies to collect use taxes whether the products were sold over the Internet or via mail order catalog. I chaired the Small Business Committee for a long time. I made speeches about being a small businessman a lot of times on the floor of the Senate. But you tell me, is it fair for a Main Street merchant to collect sales taxes on every single thing he sells, from a loaf of bread on up, to support the fire department, to support the police, to support the local schools, to support everything under the shining sun in that community, that county, that State--is it fair for a Main Street merchant who is there with the people, contributing to everything that comes down the pike--is it fair to make him collect the sales tax, but his competitors, who are selling $300-plus billion worth of things over the Internet by the year 2002 and over $100 billion a year on mail-order sales, not collect a dime? I stand corrected. There are a very, very few who do charge sales taxes, just because they are good citizens. Let me digress a moment to tell you who one of those good citizens is--none other than our distinguished Senator from Utah, Senator Bennett. Senator Bennett and some of his colleagues a few years ago started an office supply business. He told me that as they sat around discussing various aspects of that business and how they were going to form it, and so on, the question came up: What are we going to do about sales taxes? He said they talked about it and they concluded that they would be a lot better citizens and would feel a lot better about it if they just voluntarily collected taxes on all of the office equipment that they sold. Incidentally, this business has some retail outlets here in Washington and in Maryland. They would now be required to collect the sales tax because they simply have a physical presence. But they did it long before they were a physical presence; at one time they were a pure mail-order house. Senator Bennett joined the Small Business Committee when I was chairman of that committee. In a hearing one day, he said, ``Don't let them tell you how complex this is and how difficult it would be for them to collect taxes in every State for every State municipality and every county in the country.'' Senator Bennett says it is the easiest thing in the world. At the end of the month, they push a button on their computer and the checks go out. One thing Senator Graham and I would do would be to give companies the option of collecting a blended rate which covers all state and local taxes. By giving the companies this option, we can reduce the burden on remote sellers when local sales taxes vary within a state. But the point I am trying to make is, Senator Bennett told me it is not complicated to collect use taxes. When the debate begins on this amendment, if and when it ever does, I hope my colleagues will take stock of the fact that one of their own colleagues says that is a bogus, specious argument. Madam President, sometimes these mail-order houses say, ``Well, we don't ask for any services. We don't need police protection. We don't need fire protection. Our kids don't go to school in your State. So why should we be penalized and be required to pay taxes when we are not a burden in your community and in your State?'' With these mail-order catalogs, one of the biggest problems States and municipalities particularly have is disposing of the waste in their landfills. You ask them: What is one of the biggest problems you have in your landfills and operating your landfills? They will tell you it is the unbelievable, staggering tonnage of mail-order catalogs. If I throw 10 of them a day away, multiply that by the people of this country who get those things every day, then call your mayors back home and ask them why they are for the Bumpers-Graham proposal. I will tell you exactly why they are for it. They are for it because they have to dispose of that stuff. They are for it because they don't believe it is right to penalize Main Street merchants by making them collect all the taxes and these people mailing things through the mail every day are getting a free ride. Back to Senator Wyden. As I said a moment ago, I don't know of any Senator--certainly not many Senators in the Senate--for whom I have as much respect as I have for Senator Wyden. But I don't agree with his bill either. When you consider the fact that I have been fighting the battle for years--this losing battle, I might add--for years I have been fighting that losing battle with mail-order houses, which have increased their sales to well over $100 billion a year, and the States are getting whacked, because they are not collecting the taxes on it. But I say that is just a pittance compared to Internet sales and what they are going to be 3 years from now. According to an article in Time magazine--the most comprehensive article I have read was in Time magazine dealing with this very subject of Internet sales. You can buy an automobile on the Internet. You can buy tapes. You can buy movies. You can buy anything on the Internet. Amazon Books I don't think has ever made a dime, and their stock is just shooting through the roof. What do you think about Main Street bookstores in the country that are paying taxes for the books they sell in Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia, but not Amazon? And Amazon sales are soaring. But the final point I want to make is that sales of merchandise over the Internet, that you would otherwise buy from a Main Street merchant, are calculated by the year 2002, no later than 2003, to be $300 billion. Now, 5 percent of that in sales taxes, which is about the average, is $15 billion a year that the States are not collecting--$15 billion in taxes that the Main Street merchant is not getting, and it is a travesty. You should never say on the Senate floor, ``I don't think my amendment is going to pass.'' Considering the fact that in 1995 I did not get one single Republican vote, I think it is fair to say I probably ``ain't'' going to pick up a bunch of them next time. But you know something. Somebody asked me one time, ``Why are you quitting? Why are you not running again?'' And I said, ``Because I have tackled too many losing causes. I don't enjoy it. I don't enjoy losing anymore than Notre Dame enjoys losing a football game, and the few victories I get and I have had in the Senate are simply not enough to offset the trauma of the many losses I have sustained.'' And that is not to denigrate anybody. We are all independent here. We think freely. We are supposed to be representing our constituents back home. And I guess most people just look at this differently. So I may not win this one either, in fact I probably won't. And that does not dampen my enthusiasm for what I am talking about, nor does it dampen the meritorious nature of what I consider a meritorious cause. I am going back to the beginning because I used to be a small town merchant. I had to compete with big companies. I had to compete with mail-order houses even back then, in the 1950s and 1960s. And I did not enjoy a minute of it. I was on the school board. I was president of the chamber of commerce. I was chairman of the annual banquet of the chamber. I was chairman of the Christmas parade. I did all of those things. And yet I had to compete with people who did not have any of those responsibilities and did not contribute one red cent to my hometown or my home State. And yet for some reason or other, as meritorious as it seems to sound right now, I don't know how other people justify their vote against this when, as I say, the mayors, the Governors, the city councilmen, municipalities, everybody under the shining Sun charged with the responsibility of making their hometown and their home State function, favors mine and Senator Graham's amendment. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. What is the parliamentary situation?

Mr. BUMPERS. Is there any particular order, Madam President?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I want to speak for just a few minutes on what the House did last Saturday in announcing that they had passed an $80 billion tax cut. To tell you the truth, I take a lot of ribbing around here about the length of this cord. And to really say everything I need to say and want to say about what the House did Saturday would take another 10 feet on this cord, because I really think it is one of the most irresponsible acts--knowingly irresponsible acts--I have ever seen since I have been in the Senate. To add insult to injury, I heard a young Congressman Saturday evening on the news saying, ``After all, the Republicans created this surplus. They ought to have some say so about how it is going to be used.'' I have heard hyperbole in my day, but I think that exceeds anything I have ever heard in my life, because it was in 1993, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, where we had to bring the Vice President of the United States over to pass a bill that President Clinton had submitted to us under which he promised would result in balanced budget. When he ran for President in 1992, he didn't promise a balanced budget. What he promised was that he would reduce the annual deficit by 50 percent during his first 4 years in office. Bear in mind that the 2 years before President Clinton took office, under President Bush--and you can go back as far as 1981--the deficits started running totally out of control, as every economist in the Nation said they would, after we cut taxes and increased spending in 1981 as a part of the Reagan revolution. By the time George Bush finished his term, if I am not mistaken, the last two deficits for 1991 and 1992 were about $250 billion to $300 billion a year. It was frightening. I am just 1 of 100 Senators here, but I can tell you, I had decided that the place was utterly out of control. So when the President promised the American people he would cut the annual deficits in half and submitted what was called OBRA 93, the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1993, it did, in fact, raise taxes and it cut spending by an equal amount. We were supposed to raise taxes by $250 billion and cut spending by $250 billion for an impact over the ensuing 5 years of a reduction of the deficit by $500 billion. The people of the country, shortly thereafter, became rather excited about it. The bond daddies in New York City, who pretty much determine economic policy in this country, were excited, too. After all, they said, maybe these clowns really are serious for a change. I will tell you how serious it was. As I said, when we tallied up the vote, it was 50 ayes and 50 nays. Vice President Gore sat in the Chair of the Presiding Officer, which is his constitutional duty, and untied the vote. So the Clinton bill, OBRA 93, passed 51 to 50 without one single Republican vote. Not one. It had come from the House of Representatives to us where it had passed the House of Representatives without one--without one--single Republican vote. The bill passed the entire Congress, House and Senate, without one Republican vote on either side, and this young House Member stood up on the floor of the House on Saturday and announced to the world, ``After all, the Republicans created this surplus.'' When President Clinton became President and we passed that bill, OBRA 93, in August of 1993, we made it retroactive. Not fair. It really wasn't fair. I didn't like it myself, but I voted for it. A lot of fairly wealthy people--and I have a few wealthy friends, my brother one of them, and he practically threatened to cut me out of his will because we made it retroactive. What happened as a result of making it retroactive? I will tell you precisely what happened. Instead of the projected $290 billion deficit for 1994, it turned out to be $254 billion, $36 billion less than had been anticipated, $36 billion less than each of the 2 preceding years of the Bush administration. The projections for 1994 had been $290 billion to $300 billion. That year, it turned out to be $207 billion, and people began to get excited about the deficit suddenly going down for a change. People's confidence level rose. The unemployment rate began to go down. When people have confidence, they spend money. The economy began to really soar, and the more it soared, the more taxes people paid. When 1995 rolled around, it went from--it wasn't $290 billion, as had been predicted the preceding 4 years. It was down to $154 billion in 1995. People were really getting excited. These are sort of round figures. I am not sure of the precise figures, but they are close enough. In 1996, the deficit went to $107 billion, and in 1997, $22 billion. By this time, the whole country is absolutely incredulous. They cannot believe that a country that had shown every sign of taking leave of its senses had suddenly come to its senses, and the deficit, which was $300 billion a year as far as the eye could see the day Bill Clinton was inaugurated, was suddenly $22 billion last year. Right now, 3 days from now, on Thursday of this week we feel--OMB and the Congressional Budget Office feel--that the surplus could run between $50 billion and $63 billion. It is the first time in 30 years, and the only reason we did it 30 years ago was because Lyndon Johnson dumped the Social Security trust fund into the budget, and the Social Security trust fund caused us to have a surplus in 1969. We haven't had one since until this year, which hopefully will materialize on Thursday. And this young House Member says the Republicans created this surplus, that they have some rights about what to do with it. They have some rights, of course, but I cannot tell you how offended I am by that when the 1993 bill is the very thing that cost the Democrats control of Congress. Two of the finest Senators I have ever known in my life, good friends, lost their seats because they voted for that bill. The House Members were swept out totally because of that bill. I have said on the floor before and I will repeat it, if that is what it took--no matter how traumatic it is to me that the Democrats lost control and still don't have control of Congress--that it was not too big a price to pay to get our fiscal house in order. And here are the Republicans, again, at the same old stand with the same old economic policy saying, ``We've got to cut taxes.'' What is the tax cut? It is the same old tax cut: 53 percent of it goes to the wealthiest 15 percent of the people in America. If I were rich, I would be a Republican, too. No, I wouldn't. My father would be whirling in his grave if I did a thing like that. Well, let me give you the bad news. The bad news is, the surplus is not real. It is not a certifiable surplus. Do you know why? Because we still use Social Security in the budget. If we had truth in budgeting around here, where all the trust funds--the Social Security trust fund, the highway trust fund, the airport trust fund, the pension funds--if all of those funds were taken out of the budget, not only would we not be looking at a surplus, we would be looking at a very healthy deficit. And so as rhapsodic and euphoric as most people are about what we call a surplus for the first time in 30 years, it is not a surplus. There is $100 billion in the budget this year that is money right out of the Social Security trust fund. You take the $100 billion Social Security trust fund out, and you have a healthy $40- to--I don't know what the figure is--somewhere $40-plus billion deficit. This is no time--we know that Social Security under the present system is going to be totally bankrupt in about the year 2029; and by the year 2013, we are going to be paying out more every year than we take in, which is a far cry from a $100 billion surplus we are getting a year now. I think the Social Security trust fund in about the year 2013 will have over $3 trillion in it--$3 trillion. You think about all that money, but by the year 2029 it will be dead broke, it will be on a pay-as-you-go basis. We will be taking in money one day and paying it out the next. There will be no trust fund. So when the President said, ``Social Security first,'' he meant that. What does ``Social Security first'' mean? It means that you do not pay for tax cuts with Social Security trust funds. Right now, if we raid the surplus, we are raiding the Social Security trust fund. As I said in the beginning, I need about 10 more feet of cord on this thing to say everything I want to say. I just do not speak well unless I have an opportunity to walk up and down this aisle. All I want to say to my brethren on the other side --good friends, people whom I like-- and I am not in the business of giving Republicans political advice; they have been doing reasonably well without me. But I will say this: They should know--and they do know it, and I think they had a few defectors over in the House the other day who said, ``I'm not about to go home and face people and tell them that I have just voted for a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America and I did it out of the Social Security trust fund.'' I would love to run against somebody who voted that way. I would do my very best to hammer them into the ground, because it is an honest accusation and it is pointing out to the American people what irresponsible conduct this Congress is capable of engaging in. So I do not think it is any secret to the Speaker of the House or any of the House Republicans who voted for it. And, quite frankly, I do not think it is going anywhere in the U.S. Senate. And in the unlikely chance it should also pass the Senate, I do not think there is a chance in the world that President Clinton--I do not care how weak he is or how weak he is perceived to be, I can almost give you an ironclad promise he will veto that bill. And I promise you, the veto will not be overridden. While President Clinton has been a friend of mine for 25 years--I guess longer than anybody in the Senate--he is a friend of mine, I do not deny that, has been; we come from the same State; we share the same political friends at home. I do not have any doubt about his absolute commitment on things like this. I am trusting him completely when he says he will veto the bill, and, as I say, I am going to do everything that I can to make sure it never reaches his desk. Having said that, let me say one final thing. Madam President, in 1981, Ronald Reagan said he would balance the budget by 1984. Ray Thornton--a former Member of the House, told me his 81-year-old father- in-law said one day somebody told him, ``Ronald Reagan is going to balance the budget by spending more money and cutting taxes''--take in less and spend more. He said, ``What a dynamite idea. I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before.'' The day Ronald Reagan held up his hand and was inaugurated, the national debt was $1 trillion; and 8 years later when he left, it was $3.2 trillion. He managed to triple it in 8 years. But you know something? I voted with the President in 1981, not quite the way he suggested, but I voted for the spending cuts that he proposed and against the tax cuts. Fritz Hollings and Bill Bradley and I were the only three Senators who voted that way, and we would have balanced the budget in 1984 if everybody had voted that way. But, as you know, everybody did not vote that way. So what happened was, we wound up doubling defense spending within 4 years after Ronald Reagan was elected President--doubled it within 4 years. That was back when we found out, after throwing all that money at the Pentagon, they we were paying $7,000 for toilet seats and $7,000 for coffee makers--the same thing everybody does when you throw that much money at them. Madam President, I have said about all I want to say except, I will be lying prostrate at the end of this cord in this aisleway the day that tax cut passes here. I plead with my colleagues, let's do something completely apart from politics. Let's not do something that is as irresponsible as that is. Nobody, I guess, ever lost an election by voting for a tax cut. People here are getting pretty apprehensive about voting against a so-called marriage penalty. The one thing you never hear is that many married people already have a bonus. There is a marriage penalty for some, but many married people are a lot better off filing joint returns than they are filing as single persons. I would not mind addressing the problem of what the House did the other day which, I think, amounts to an average of $240 a year. That is about $20 a month. Well, that is not beanbag for some people, but it is not enough to rape and pillage the Social Security trust fund for when those very people we are trying to help are also concerned about that Social Security trust fund being viable when they get to 65 years of age. And you ask them, ``Would you rather be assured that the Social Security trust fund will be there for you when you retire or would you rather have a $20-a-month tax cut?'' Talk about no-brainers. Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, as I understood the parliamentary situation, at the hour of 2 p.m. there will be 1\1/2\ hours to debate the motion to proceed to the Internet bill. Is my understanding of that correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Until 3:30.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for yielding to me. Mr. President, just to put this thing in perspective, I call on all of my colleagues to recall the number of times they have appeared before their local chamber of commerce and Rotary Clubs and told them that, once they get to the U.S. Senate, or even the House of Representatives, it is going to be a new day. They are going to protect the people's rights. They are going to take care of their money. We have pledged: ``I will treat your property and your money as though it were my own.'' I have made that speech, and I daresay 99 other Senators have made it as well. So I say, we have to ask ourselves, are we fulfilling our commitment and our solemn vow to the people back home? Ask yourself this question: If you had an oil well, and you discovered that your lessee was selling your oil to an affiliate or a wholly-owned subsidiary, and they were selling it at a price considerably less than published spot prices of that oil--would that be acceptable to you as a private landowner? Let's assume your lessee is selling your oil to an affiliate for $12 a barrel, but the spot price of that oil is $14 a barrel--if you were the royalty owner, wouldn't you question that? Would you tolerate it? I read a story in USA Today from which I quote: States, native American tribes and landowners are suing for the full, open-market price fees, and a few oil companies have begun to cut settlement deals from Alabama to New Mexico, rather than face trial. According to the Watchdog Project on government oversight, there is more than $2 billion in uncollected Federal royalties at open-market prices, and the total grows by $1 million every week. When you vote against Senator Boxer's amendment, are you keeping faith with the people back home who own this oil? It does not belong to the U.S. Senate, it belongs to the taxpayers of America. When the Secretary of the Interior signs a lease with Exxon, Mobil, or whoever, the lessees agree to pay a royalty, usually 12.5 percent, on the oil they take from the Federal land. However, having agreed to that, they now are not paying that. While I appreciate that oil prices are currently low, that does not provide justification to cheat the taxpayers of America out of the fair royalty on their oil. If this case did not have any merit, why did Mobil recently settle with the U.S. Government for $45 million on this very issue? They have essentially agreed to the very same thing Senator Boxer is saying they owe. Why are Native Americans suing for royalties? Why are States collecting big, big settlements with the oil companies? Precisely for the very reason Senator Boxer brought this amendment up. All she is saying is let's collect on the lease for what the oil brings, not for some fictitious price created by selling to yourself, by selling to an affiliate. If you are going to treat the taxpayers' money as though it were your own, ask yourself what would you do? Why, you wouldn't tolerate this for 10 seconds, would you, if you found out that the oil company that had the lease on your land had been selling oil to a wholly-owned affiliate at $2 under the spot price for which they could have sold it? This reminds me of a coal case. We found out that Ohio Power Company, a utility company in Ohio, had been buying coal from one of its wholly owned affiliates for 100 percent more than they could have bought it on the open market. You talk about a cozy relationship. This was a slightly different situation, but I am just telling you, these things happen. So, if you vote against Senator Boxer's amendment, don't go home and tell people how you are treating their property as if it was your own, because you wouldn't tolerate it for a second. Mr. President, the Minerals Management Service is the agency we depend on to manage royalties on Federal lands leased for oil and gas. We expect them to get the most for it they can get. Congress has set the royalties on oil here. We say the Secretary of the Interior cannot lease it for less than 12.5 percent, and then say to the Minerals Management Service, ``But if you catch the oil companies pulling shenanigans, don't do anything about it''? If Senator Boxer's amendment fails, that is what we are saying. So I regret that the price of oil is low, and the Senator from Texas has made that point a number of times; oil prices are low. Most of you know I have spent 9 years trying to make the Federal Government make the hard rock mining companies pay royalty on the land we give them for $2.50 an acre. I faced it. I am leaving here at the end of this year. I don't know what will happen after that, but I can tell you one thing, I tried for 9 years. I stood where I have been standing right now for 9 years and squealed like a pig under a gate, saying the same thing I am saying now: You are cheating the American taxpayers. You think about us giving away 3.2 million acres of land in this country for the last 130 years for $2.50 an acre, land that had billions and billions of dollars of minerals under it, and what did the taxpayers get back? They got 557,000 abandoned mine sites that are going to cost them $70 billion to reclaim. Royalties? Zip. Nothing. Not a dime. I lose it every year, and the people who vote against me go back to the Chamber of Commerce and say, ``Oh, I'll treat your property just as though it were my own.'' If you believe that is the truth, you ought to be in a mental institution. If that is your idea of treating property the way you would treat it if it were your own, you need a guardian. The situation here is essentially the same thing. The other day when I tried to raise another issue, just an environmental issue on how we are going to mine these hard rock minerals, I lost. I got 40 votes. I knew I was going to lose. The same people who voted against me will go back home and say they are environmentalists, even though they do not want the Interior Department to regulate how we mine and how we reclaim the land after we mine. I just got killed on it, 58 to 40. As I say, I am leaving, so the other side won. I know a couple of people here who I think will take it on, and it will be in capable hands, but I forewarn you: ``It ain't an easy battle.'' That is the most egregious case I have ever run across in my life--billions in gold and palladium and silver taken off the land over the years and taxpayers don't get a nickel for it. All they get is a big environmental Superfund site. Mr. President, in this case I will plead with my colleagues, the States favor this. I understand Wyoming has kicked the traces over, but the rest of them favor this amendment, and they are cutting deals with the oil companies right now. Senator Hutchison said no, the United States is not going to cut a deal; if the Indian tribes and the States want to, that is their business, but oil prices are low, and we are just not going to bother with it. Gold prices are low, too, and I know that. Mr. President, I will close by simply reminding my colleagues that I have heard in the last 24 hours that one of the principal candidates planning to run for President says he is reconsidering because he doesn't know whether he wants to subject his family to what goes on up here. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. He says he doesn't want to subject his family to the kind of things to which politicians are being subjected. There are two sides to that story, and I understand that. When I ran for Governor 28 years ago--I won the Democratic primary almost 28 years ago today--I had a slogan: ``Let's get our State together.'' We had been bickering and nothing was happening in the State. I said, ``Let's get our State together,'' and when I was Governor, I called people together, Republicans and Democrats, and we worked well together. We had 4 great years, if you will pardon a self- serving statement. I always said politics is a noble profession. My father said it a long time before Jack Kennedy did. He believed it. He served in the legislature. He wanted his two sons to go into politics. How long has it been since a parent has said they want their son or daughter to go into politics? In any event, he didn't say all politicians are noble, he said public service is an honorable, noble profession. I have always believed that. I think it still is. I think what a tragedy it is that the country is in the situation it is right now and the effect that has on people and their willingness to serve and their wanting to serve as I did. I think about us voting on things here where it is obvious to me--I don't want to seem arrogant about this, but this is not even a debatable amendment about what is fair and what is right. We all know what it is. So I plead with you, do your duty. I yield the floor. Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time for the start of the debate be extended to the hour of 2:25.

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

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time for the 10-minute debate previously ordered commence as of now, and I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Louisiana, Senator Landrieu.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, my colleagues will be greatly relieved with my departure at the end of this year because they won't have to listen to this debate anymore. They may have to listen to it again, but not from me. This amendment arises from a situation which really began last year, Madam President. In order to set the stage for it, I direct my colleagues' attention to this chart here. But before doing so, let me just say that we had what I thought was a solemn agreement last year on this same issue. I won't say it was a handshake contract, but last year the Interior appropriations bill contained a provision that was added in the committee markup, which said the Secretary of the Interior may not promulgate new regulations for the mining of hard rock minerals on Federal lands until every Governor of 11 Western States had individually agreed to it. In 1976 we passed FLPMA, an acronym for Federal Lands Policy Management Act, it was my second year in the Senate when we passed that, but I was very active in the negotiations and passage of that bill. It was a comprehensive bill that determined how all Bureau of Land Management lands would be handled. In it we said that the Secretary of the Interior is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that on Bureau lands, no unnecessary and undue degradation would occur. Now, as my friend, the Governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles, who used to be our colleague, used to say on this floor, ``The mother tongue is English.'' You cannot say it any better in English than to say the Secretary is hereby charged with the responsibility for making certain that there is no undue, unnecessary degradation of Federal lands. We have about 450 million acres of Federal lands, and an awful lot of it is eligible to be mined for various hardrock minerals, notably gold, platinum, silver, zinc, lead, you name it. So in 1980, the Secretary issued regulations to comply with FLPMA and in 1981 they were finalized and went into effect. Everybody applauded and said it is wonderful. Now we have regulations in place that will govern mining companies. What brought these regulations about? It was the first time we had ever tried to regulate mining on Federal lands. Why did we do it? Because at that very moment, there were 557,000 abandoned mines in this country. Who do you think had been left with the pleasure of cleaning up those 557,000 abandoned mines? You guessed it--``Uncle Sucker.'' The cleanup costs, according to the Mineral Policy Center, for those 557,000 mine sites is calculated to be between $32.7 billion and $71.5 billion. Within the 557,000 abandoned mines, 59 of those are now Superfund sites. We don't put things on the Superfund list just for fun. That is a big-time environmental disaster. In addition to 59 Superfund sites, we have 12,000 miles of rivers that have been polluted by mining waste, and we have 2,000 national park sites in need of reclamation. Now, think of that. We have 2,000 mine sites within the national parks that have to be reclaimed. And because it took the Nation too long to wake up to the environmental damage that was being done by mining in this country, this damage had already occurred when we passed FLPMA in 1976 saying the Secretary will promulgate regulations to make sure that not only this comes to an end, but that it never happens again. So we gave the Secretary regulatory authority. In 1981, those rules went into effect. Let me make one point, and I will make it more than once in this debate. The mining of gold in this country is done nowadays primarily with the use of cyanide. Cyanide is a lethal chemical. Now, Madam President, in 1991, George Bush was President, a conservative Republican administration. Because this new technique of mining with cyanide had gone into effect and there were several mines which had caused cyanide to leak into the streams and rivers around it and into the underground water supply, the environmentalists were squealing like pigs under a gate. So, in 1991, the Bush administration, through Secretary Lujan, came out with a study to develop new regulations to take care of these new environmental problems. But because in 1993 we were trying to reform the whole mining law, everybody said, ``Well, we have got this whole law we are going to reform,'' so the Interior Department decided to suspend the work on revising the regulations. Unfortunately, in 1994, the Western Senators were able to kill the mining law reform legislation that was pending in Congress. As a result, last year, Bruce Babbitt, the all-time favorite whipping boy of the West, said he, as Secretary of the Interior, was going to honor FLPMA as it was written, and that is to make sure there is no unnecessary and undue degradation of the public lands. So he reinitiated the process begun in the Bush Administration to revise the mining regulations in order to attempt to prevent environmental disasters, such as the leak of cyanide into the rivers, streams and underground water supplies. So Senator Reid of Nevada, in the appropriations subcommittee last year added a provision which would have prohibited the Secretary from promulgating these rules unless all of the Western Governors consented. The provision, as it was drafted, was patently clear. It simply meant that each Western Governors had veto power over the revised regulations. That was, obviously, a little too much, even for some of my friends in the West, to stomach. So Senator Reid and I worked together in good faith and mutual friendship and respect on both sides. We amended that language to say that the Secretary will consult with all the Governors of the West. After he has done so, he will certify to the Congress that he has consulted with all of the Western Governors. He maintained that he had already done that, but they disagreed with that. So we required consultation in the amendment. That is the path we adopted last year. We also put a time schedule in there so that the Secretary could continue to work on the regulations, and he could promulgate the regulations after November 15. The deal was done. It will be done after the election. Nobody will be hurt politically. The only thing wrong with that is this year--1998--when the bill comes out of the appropriations subcommittee, the deal was reneged upon. What is the new requirement? The new provision states that the Secretary could not promulgate these regulations until the National Academy of Sciences has studied it for 27 months. Next year, it will be the National Institutes of Health. God knows, the next year it will probably be the National Organization for Women--anything to keep these regulations from going into effect. Make no mistake about what we are talking about. Everybody understands it. Under the provision that is in the bill this year, which I am proposing with this amendment to strike, guess what the timetable is. It will now take 27 months for the National Academy of Sciences to study it and to report it and the Secretary to consider it and do whatever he is going to do--27 more months, over 2 years, of continuing to sock the taxpayers of America with the foibles of the mining industry. I will come back to some of those foibles in just a moment and tell the American taxpayers what they are paying for right now. Why 27 months? You know, if you are a U.S. Senator, and if you paid any attention at all--you don't have to have a picture drawn for you-- 27 months takes us past the year 2000. So we go past the election in the year 2000, and all of my friends who are going to come in here and vote against my proposal today hopefully will elect a President of a different persuasion who will bring James Watt back as our Secretary of the Interior. That is the politics of the issue. It is not pleasant to talk about things like that on the floor of the Senate. But there isn't a single Senator here today who is going to vote who doesn't understand precisely what it is about. Every Senator who votes against my amendment is going to know in spades that he is voting to continue to allow mining companies to mine on Federal lands with virtually no regulations to guide them, being able to put up an insufficient bond, and when they take bankruptcy and go south again, will leave the taxpayers of America to pick up the tab. I don't know how I can put it any plainer than that. Madam President, let me be just a little bit more dramatic, a little bit more graphic about why the anti-environmental rider in this bill should be taken out. I want you to bear in mind, last year we postponed it until November 15. If my amendment is not adopted, that takes us down well past November. It takes us into about January 2001; and more and more environmental degradation, more rivers and streams polluted, more mining companies taking bankruptcy and heading south with an insufficient bond. That is for what you are going to be voting. For all of those who are running for reelection this year, when you go home and your opponent says, ``Why did you vote against putting some regulations in to regulate the use of cyanide to keep it from going into our underground aquifers and our rivers and streams; why did you vote to continue that,'' I would like to hear your answer. But just to give the taxpayers of America some information, if not my colleagues who are not here this morning, in 1992, Galactic Resources, the owner of the Summitville Mine in Colorado, took bankruptcy. They left cyanide, acid, and metal runoff going into the underground aquifers and the Alamosa River. Do you know what has happened since then? The taxpayers of this country are paying over $1 million a year to try to contain cyanide and acid runoff from that mine, not Galactic Resources. The Summitville mine took bankruptcy and went south. That was in 1992. The reason they were able to create an environmental disaster in the State of Colorado is because Colorado's bonding regulations were insufficient. Federal regulations are similarly flawed. We have constantly postponed new regulations, and the regulations we were operating with were promulgated in 1981, and in 1981 we didn't even know about cyanide poison being used in the mining process. Secretary Babbitt is trying his best to promulgate rules and regulations to make sure there will be no more Summitville mines. So when people come walking onto the Senate floor to vote on this amendment, remember, you get to go home and tell your constituents that they are picking up a million-dollar tab a year because we do not have regulations to control gold mining in this country. Now we have a brand new one in Montana. Pegasus Gold Company, which has filed for bankruptcy recently closed the Zortman-Landusky mine on BLM and private land in Montana. They have filed for bankruptcy. Cyanide spills all over the place. And who do you think is going to get to pick up the shortage on their bond? The taxpayers of America. And here is one, to be totally fair about it, that is not on Federal land, the Gilt Edge mine in South Dakota, another 1998 matter. They had cyanide leaks in the ground water, acid mine drainage, and they are in financial difficulty. And if they take bankruptcy, it is estimated that their bond will pay about 50 percent of the cost of cleaning up that mess. The regulations that we are talking about trying to get promulgated to stop this outrage are not just to stop the use of cyanide. We are not trying to stop the use of cyanide. We are trying to make them use it in a way that we know the plastic cover on the ground is strong enough to not break and leak. But the second thing we are talking about is making them put up a sufficient bond; in case they do have a spillage, in case they do go broke, the taxpayers will not be left with it. The reason I use Gilt Edge is not because they are mining on Federal lands but because they are proposing to extend their operations onto National Forest land. So since 1976 we have been trying to stop mining companies from mining in an improper way, leaving the taxpayers with the tab. We have been trying a lot of other things without success. But if I were speaking on national television to 268 million people in America and all the adults were listening, how many votes do you think I would get? About 90 percent of the American people. But, unhappily, I am not speaking to 268 million Americans. Lord, how I wish I were; I feel supremely confident as to how the American people would feel about this. So, Madam President, let me go back and make one other point and then I will allow some of my adversaries to have their say. Let me describe for you how gold is mined today under modern methods. First of all, you have to dig up the earth. You dig up huge, cavernous amounts of soil that supposedly has gold in it. You bring the soil into the mine site, where huge plastic covers have been laid out on the ground, and you dump this soil on this plastic cover that covers the ground and presumably will hold any fluid or liquids that you put through this dirt. Huge pits. You ought to see them. They look like abandoned strip mining sites. But this modern method that I talked about is new, brand new, and is causing all the damage that we need regulations to control. Then they use a drip process along the top of this big mound of dirt where this cyanide drips through, and it seeps down through this huge pile of dirt. The gold is attracted to this cyanide solution. Then it pours out on the side into sort of a gutter, where the gold is strained out of it and the cyanide is recycled and once again put through this drip process. It is like a drip irrigation system. Now, the first thing you have to do is understand how lethal cyanide is, and the second thing you have to understand is that the reason some of these spills occur is that the plastic liners leak. Think about how ominous it is. How would you like to live in the vicinity where you knew your underground water supply had cyanide leaking into it? Mr. President, I have nothing against the National Academy of Sciences, it is a fine organization. But we don't need another Academy study. The National Academy of Sciences has already examined the matter. In 1978, when we enacted SMCRA, governing the regulation of coal mining, a provision was included in the bill to require the National Academy of Sciences to study the regulatory requirements needed to address the environmental impact of hard rock mining. That study was completed in 1979. That same study found a need for a Federal regulatory framework. In 1996, the Environmental Law Institute studied hard rock mining programs and said the current regulations were insufficient. That was in 1996. In 1992, the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs prepared a study that found significant gaps in environmental regulation of mining. The GAO has studied this issue to death and has found flaws in the administration of our mining laws. The question then becomes, When you consider all the studies that have been done and the damage that has occurred while we have been doing studies, why in the name of all that is good and holy do we need another study? I repeat, do we need another study to postpone this until after the year 2000, when a new Secretary, presumably, will take office who does not even believe in studies, let alone environmental regulation? This is all a ploy. Everybody in the Senate knows that. When they vote today, they are going to think, ``Now, what kind of a 30-second spot can somebody make out of me voting to continue mining gold with cyanide when the regulations were written before cyanide was even used in gold mining?'' And they think about it and they put it through this little filter, this little political filter in their ear, and say, ``Well, on the other side it says the National Academy of Sciences. Who can object to the National Academy of Sciences studying something? It is a very prestigious organization.'' And they can probably try to convince their constituents that they are trying to protect them by having the National Academy of Sciences do a study when, in fact, the National Academy of Sciences could do what they need to do on their own in 2 months. But the list I just gave you shows this has been studied and studied and postponed and postponed, until now we have these environmental disasters on our hands that cost the taxpayers ``gazillions.'' It is going to cost them a fortune. And don't anybody make any mistake in your judgment about how this is going to play out. As I said, we had a solemn agreement last year. Everybody understood exactly what we were agreeing to. And, incidentally, we said the Secretary had to consult with all the Western Governors. He has done that. Governor Miller, I think, is president of the Western Governors' Association; he has notified Members of Congress that they have been consulted with. Everything we agreed to last year has taken place, and we come back here today and industry says, ``No, we have to have one more study.'' I have said most of what I want to say. I just ask, what is the objection, even of the Western Senators? What is their objection to the Interior Department, that they want to prohibit any update of the regulations? Nobody has cited a single objection to the drafts of the Secretary of Interior that were going to go into effect, that were going to be promulgated November 15 of this year. Do they object to mining companies having to file a plan before they start mining? Do they object to requiring mining companies to post a bond sufficient to take care of the devastation that they may cause? Do they object to a regulation that says they must reclaim the land when they finish mining it? What is the objection? Is it that they have to minimize the adverse impact on the environment, if at all economically and technically possible? It does not say they have to. It says they have to minimize adverse impacts if at all technically and economically possible. Who could object to that? Madam President, I yield the floor. Mr. MURKOWSKI addressed the Chair.