Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. There will not be a second degree.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I will not belabor the points that have been made time and again here. 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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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. Senator, let me answer that by saying the fact that Alaska was, until recently, a frontier State, as was all of the West not too many years ago. To suggest that simply because the West was settled by pioneers who made wagon tracks or where they had footpaths where they tried to get to the West, to suggest that all of those routes across Federal lands--let me finish, sir.

Mr. BUMPERS. That is the very point I am getting ready to make. Simply because somebody drove a covered wagon or group of covered wagons over land heading west, or it was a footpath used by people who walked on it, to suggest those paths now constitute a highway, simply by mowing weeds on it, by moving a few rocks and showing that you did some construction, how foolish can we be?

Mr. BUMPERS. No. I will finish reading, and then I will yield the floor. The role of State law: He says, ``In making its recommendations, the agency shall apply State law in effect from 1976 to the extent that it is consistent with Federal law.''

Mr. BUMPERS. I understand that our side needs to check. We have people coming and going. I assume that is what the Senator has concern about.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I had a Senator ask me earlier if I felt that I was right about this amendment. Let me answer that question for any Senator who would ask the same question. I have never felt more comfortable with a position in my life than I do on this. It has nothing to do with Alaska or Utah or Idaho. What it has to do with is saying this language of the senior Senator from Alaska, No. 1, has no business in this bill; No. 2, if it did, it is a terrible amendment; No. 3, men and women of good will could sit down and work out a sensible policy for the Department of the Interior and require them to report back to us with regulations or something else. But under the existing law, what the amendment of the Senator from Alaska does is to return the determination of whether these thousands and hundreds of thousands of miles of claimed rights-of-way constitute a highway within the definition of the Hodel policy. It is a question of whether or not we are going to allow rights-of-way simply because they were claimed to be there before 1976 when we repealed R.S. 2477, whether we are going to allow the use of those rights-of-way to cross wilderness areas, national parks, monuments, all kinds of protected Federal areas. I submit to you that the people of this country, if they knew the substance of this debate, that we were actually considering the Stevens amendment to this bill, if they knew what the implications of that were, they would be up in arms. I cannot believe--not to denigrate my good friends from these Western States who have a deep and abiding interest, an understandable and deep and abiding interest, in this issue--I cannot believe that more than 3 percent of the people of this country would condone granting applications for highways across these areas because there was some kind of a footpath or a trail or something else, even vegetation that had been tromped down. Under the Hodel policy in 1988, Donald Hodel had a policy that said: If you have cut high vegetation, you had a lot of weeds and you cut them down, that constitutes a highway. Have you ever heard anything as ridiculous as that in your life?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Reid amendment be temporarily set aside while I offer an amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 64.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Yes. Privilege of the Floor

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Now, Mr. President, I want to make another point crystal clear, and it is this: When I said a moment ago that the effect of this amendment would allow State law to determine what constitutes a valid existing right-of-way, it would take away the Secretary of the Interior's ability to determine what was a highway. In short, all of these thousands and thousands of so-called R.S. 2477 right-of-way claims all over the West would become valid. Now, bear in mind, there is another facet to this, and that is the Secretary in January of this year set out a policy which effectively repealed a policy established by Donald Hodel when he was Secretary of Interior in 1988. The Hodel policy--it is not a regulation; we have never had a rule or regulation, it was simply a policy statement--was that just about anything could qualify as a highway. Now, whether the Hodel policy stated that the States shall have exclusive rights to determine what a right-of-way is, I do not really know right now, but I can tell you, if section 310 passes, State law will determine what is going to happen to thousands of rights-of-way in this country that cross national parks, wilderness areas, monuments, and any other land in the West that was set aside after these claimed rights-of-way existed. Let me give an example. Assume that there are 20 rights-of-way that the State of California would claim cross Yosemite National Park. They claim those rights-of-way were established before Yosemite became a national park. It was unreserved Federal land before, and these rights- of-way were across that Federal land. Later on, we establish Yosemite National Park. Under this section, if the Stevens language stays in this bill, which has absolutely no business being in this bill, but if my amendment is defeated, that means that California law will dictate what highways can be built across Yosemite National Park--not the National Park Service, not the Federal Government, but the State of California. Think of all the thousands of rights-of-way that could be claimed in Alaska. Mr. President, just for openers, here are some of the claims that have been filed. These are not all the claims that Alaska, Utah, Idaho, and other States have as to what constitutes a valid right-of- way. These are the ones that have actually been filed with the Secretary of Interior and requested to be declared an existing valid right-of-way on which they can build a four-lane superhighway, if they desire. Alaska has 256 claims on file, but they have God knows how many--thousands that they could claim. Idaho has 2,026 on file, and Utah has 6,173 claims filed in the Secretary's office. Those are a lot of potential highways across Federal lands, and the Federal Government could not stop them no matter what kind of highway they wanted to build. When I started off telling you how bizarre this was, just think about that. When we held our first hearing in the Energy Committee on what to do about these so-called R.S. 2477 rights-of-way, I may have been dense, but it took me a long time to understand that we were really talking about something serious. I never heard of anything so bizarre in my life. Yet, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee--we all represent our States, and I am not holding him guilty of anything. I am just saying the rest of us do not have to follow suit. He is chairman of the committee and he puts this in a supplemental appropriations bill designed to aid areas hurt by natural disasters, including help for the people of Arkansas. There is $6.5 million for debris removal in streams as a result of a tornado on March 1 in Arkansas. There is $3.5 million in this bill to allow an all-black community just outside Little Rock to tie into the Little Rock sewer system. Virtually the entire community of College Station was wiped out, a community of less than 500 people, and they cannot build new homes or borrow money to build new homes until they get on the sewer system. And the chairman, very graciously, and the committee, very graciously, accepted my amendment to put $3.5 million in there to accomplish that. How many nights did we look at the Dakotas and Minnesota, which was a veritable lake? Mr. President, do you know the name of the bill we are considering? It is the emergency supplemental appropriations bill. The R.S. 2477 issue is no emergency. The language I am trying to strike was put in there and it had nothing to do with any kind of disaster or emergency. It was put in there to accommodate primarily the States of Alaska, Utah, and Idaho. I have nothing against any of those States, but I tell you what I do have, I do have a strong feeling about protecting the citizens of this country and the Federal lands which they all own. Some of it is in my State--admittedly, not as much as in Alaska and some Western States--but every single Member of the U.S. Senate has a solemn obligation, occasionally, to stand on their hind legs and say no to such things as this. Every Senator has or will have a letter on his desk from Secretary Babbitt saying he will strongly urge the President to veto this $8 billion bill if this provision is left in it. Why wouldn't he? My point is, why are we, U.S. Senators, holding the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota hostage to an amendment that should not be on this bill? It is not an emergency. It is not even an appropriations measure. Mr. President, I get terribly exercised about things like this because I think I have a solemn duty to bring this to the attention of the Senate. In January of this year, Secretary Babbitt, not popular with Western Senators--but that has nothing to do with this amendment. What it does have to do with this amendment is whether or not we are going to allow every single State who can identify a pig trail that was used by human occupants any time between 1866 and 1976, across lands that have subsequently been made national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas, whether we are going to allow those States to determine that those trails are now highways and then build highways on them with no input from the Secretary. So Secretary Babbitt, in January of this year, issued a policy--not a rule, not a regulation, but a policy. Here is what his policy said. It defines a highway to be ``a thoroughfare used by the public for the passage of vehicles carrying people or goods.'' Now, Secretary Babbitt's policy also allows for the abdication of State law to the extent consistent with Federal law, which, of course, makes Federal law dominant, as it should be. Nobody is trying to punish Alaska. Nobody is trying to punish Idaho. Nobody is trying to punish Utah. What we are trying to do is say these sacred parks and monuments that we have developed over the years-- Yellowstone, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, Saguaro, you name it--you cannot let the States just walk in and willy-nilly start building highways across those places. If you do not vote for my amendment, that is precisely what you are voting for. Mr. President, I hope the Senate will pay attention to this issue--as I say, this is an arcane issue. Most people in this country do not have a clue that a law such as R.S. 2477 ever existed. I want to get help to the people of my State who have been devastated by tornadoes. I want to get help to people in California who have suffered from floods, to the Dakotas and Minnesota, one of the most awesome things we have ever watched on television. This bill is designed to help them. That is what a compassionate, caring government does. One of the reasons I voted against the constitutional amendment to balance the budget is because it would have prohibited the Congress from appropriating money to help people who had suffered that kind of disaster because it would unbalance the budget. You could not do it without a 60 percent vote of both Houses, and if you did not get it, they just suffered. That is what would happen a lot of times. I am not going to belabor this. I have made the point as well as I can. I see the junior Senator from Alaska on the floor. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Yes, I yield.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, for Members of this body who have not dealt with this issue on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, this is a slightly complex amendment. I am going to simplify it as best I can. We have had several hearings in the Energy Committee on it, but it deals with an issue that sounds so bizarre you would not believe it was actually on the statute books of this country. In 1866, Congress passed a bill which has become popularly known as R.S. 2477, Revised Statute 2477. What that law did, as part of the 1866 mining law, was to validate public highways built across unreserved public lands. That does not mean much, so here it is. The United States owns 350 million acres of land in the lower 48 States. Since 1866, we have set aside millions and millions of acres in wilderness areas, national parks, monuments, all kind of things since 1866. But bear in mind, the R.S. 2477 statute said ``unreserved lands,'' so that meant all of the public lands the United States owns that have not been set aside for another purpose. The effect of that, of course, was, from 1866 until 1976 when it was repealed, anybody who claimed a footpath, almost a cow trail, a sled trail, hiking trails, almost anything would qualify as a highway under the language in this bill. A lot of highways were built under these R.S. 2477 rights-of-way between 1866 and 1976, and we are not contesting a single one of those. What we are saying is, the provision put in this bill by the Senator from Alaska [Mr. Stevens] simply says we are going to let State law determine what is and is not a public, valid right-of-way. This, admittedly, is primarily an Alaska, Utah, and probably Idaho issue. It does not affect my State. There are some of the Western States that have these rights-of-way. But in any event, here is what the law said as we passed it in 1866. ``[T]he right-of-way for the construction of public highways across public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby granted.'' As I say, that includes dogsled trails, that includes footpaths, it includes any kind of a path. And there are literally thousands and thousands of them that have been claimed. Mr. President, I will come back to how the language in this bill will work in just a moment. But listen to this. The State of Alaska has passed a law making every section line in Alaska a right-of-way and subject to having a highway built on it. I am reluctant to say this, but if you build on just half the rights-of-way that Alaska is claiming, you would not be able to travel. There would be too many roads to get around. In any event, I want to make it crystal clear that this amendment has nothing to do with existing highways that have been built under the 1866 law. Mr. President, there have never been regulations crafted to deal with this issue. In the 1930's there was sort of a half-hearted regulation, but not really anything. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS. And anything you built prior to the repeal of this law in 1976 is yours. Nobody is trying to take that away from you.

Mr. BUMPERS. Everybody knows exactly why Don Hodel came up with that policy--because the Western Senators threatened him probably with death if he didn't. Everybody knows that policy was crazy. It was done for political purposes. We all know that. I am not going to debate that.

Mr. BUMPERS. I want to make two points, one to the junior Senator from Alaska. When he talks about how Bruce Babbitt did all of this behind closed doors last year--with no consultation--last year, the Senator will recall that we tried our very best through a public process to come up with a definition of these roads. As a matter of fact, the Secretary went through the process of trying to develop a rule as to what a road was, issued it for public comment, got over 3,000 comments, and the Senators from Alaska went ballistic and said, ``No, we do not want any part of that. We are not about to let you.'' You remember when we blocked him from proceeding further with that. Then you come here today saying this should have been done in a more sensible way, when it was the Senators from that side of the aisle who stopped him from doing it.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the February edition of Delta Airline's Sky magazine contained an article about one of this Nation's finest corporate citizens, the International Paper Co. IP has donated lumber and building materials to the National Council of Churches in its efforts to rebuild black churches burned by arsonists in recent years. One such church torched in 1994 was Friendship Missionary Baptist in Proctor, Crittenden County, AR. Last year International Paper stepped in to help this congregation. Today a new Friendship Missionary Baptist Church is under construction. Mr. President, I want to commend this fine corporate citizen for the role it is playing to reverse the misery and hardship that has been caused by these church burnings. I commend the article to my colleagues and ask that it be printed in the Record. The article follows: [From Sky, February 1997] Rebuilding Every Burned Black Church led by ceo john t. dillon, international paper has gone into ``the blessing business'' (By Timothy Harper) On Thanksgiving Day 1994, an arsonist apparently torched the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Proctor, Arkansas. It was one of the first in a series of deliberately set fires that spread through predominantly black churches across the South. Many Americans, of every color, were appalled. Not just about race and religion, these were attacks on the ideals of equality and freedom in America. Our concept of what constitutes a civilized society was being violated. In subsequent months, dozens more black churches were burned, and by the late spring and early summer of 1996, the incidents had become a compelling national story. The FBI began investigating. The National Council of Churches established the Burned Churches Fund. Churches, companies and individuals across the nation made contributions to help congregations rebuild. Many of the burned churches' congregations were poor, however, and didn't know if they could rebuild, even with donations. Until June 27, 1996, that is. One that date, John T. Dillon, chairman and chief executive officer of International Paper, the world's largest wood products company, quietly told the National Council of Churches that his company would donate lumber and building materials from his company's broad range of construction products. In his private letter to the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, Dillon promised to provide as much as was needed to rebuild every church. He put no ceiling on the amount of material to be donated, or the cost. Dillon merely asked the Council, which is overseeing the reconstruction of the churches, to coordinate the effort to make sure that every church got what it needed to rebuild. Purchase, New York-based International Paper, which had revenues in 1995 of nearly $20 billion and employs about 88,000 people around the world, provides the burned churches with lists of the company's wood and building materials, including beams, flooring, walls, sheeting, siding, shingles, doors and countertops. Churches, with the help of officials from the National Council of Churches, check off what they need and send the list back to International Paper. For churches that were burned to the ground, International Paper is providing up to 100 percent of the materials the company has to offer--and absorbing the costs. Today, with a shipment of wood and materials from International Paper, a new Friendship Missionary Baptist Church is under construction near Proctor. ``It's a wonderful thing,'' says Charles Eason, a deacon who is helping oversee the rebuilding. ``We're just a small rural church, and this donation has made the difference for us. We don't know when we would have been able to rebuild without it.'' In a memo to International employees explaining the donation, Dillon noted that many of the company's mills and local branches are is small towns across the South. ``Beyond the instant tragedy associated with this wanton destruction, these events strike at the essence of what makes small-town communities so special,'' Dillon wrote. ``For International Paper, small towns and small-town values have long been an important part of our history. The spirit of unity, dedication to purpose and pride in performing well that are so fundamental to these communities have also been indispensable to our company's success. This link, together with the premium we place on corporate citizenship, requires that International Paper respond in this time of need.'' The Rev. Albert Pennybacker, who is overseeing the church reconstruction program for the National Council of Churches, says 124 churches were damaged by burnings. Some were rebuilt before the offer from International Paper, but he and International Paper officials estimate that ``several dozen'' churches ultimately will receive free wood and building materials. ``This is a really remarkable gesture by International Paper, a remarkable commitment,'' Pennybacker says. ``We were overwhelmed by [their] generosity.'' Beyond making the wood and materials available, he says, International Paper has made an extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, promise to make deliveries right to the churches. That is no small or easily fulfilled promise. Since many of the burned churches are in isolated areas, down country lanes or out in the middle of farm fields, on land no one else wanted, those special deliveries are often far off the company's established delivery routes, taking drivers and trucks out of their usual rotations. Moreover, International Paper promised to make deliveries within a few days of receiving orders from the churches, thereby adding many thousands of dollars in staff time and rescheduling headaches to the total cost of the company's donation. Pennybacker says the National Council of Churches originally guessed that the donated materials would be worth $1 million, but he now believes the cost to International Paper could be $2 million or more--at wholesale prices, not counting the considerable costs of delivery. That means an actual savings of several million dollars for churches that otherwise would have to go out and buy their materials at retail prices. International Paper, meanwhile, does not seem to care what the contribution will end up costing. ``This is an open-ended commitment and, frankly, we're not sure just how much it's going to cost,'' says Carl Gagliardi, the International Paper executive coordinating the program out of the company's Memphis, Tennessee, office. ``This is one of the best things this company has ever done. It's been terrific for morale.'' Indeed, when International Paper's rank-and-file employees received Dillon's note outlining the company's commitment to the burned churches, many of them clamored to be part of it. A few weeks later, Pennybacker got a call at his office at the National Council of Churches headquarters in New York. An International Paper representative wanted to come in and drop off some donations from employees. Pennybacker expected ``a few thousand dollars, maybe.'' The executive showed up with a big box and dumped on Pennybacker's desk checks worth $37,787 from employees. He turned over another check for the same amount from International Paper, for a total donation of $75,574, and explained that Dillon had decreed that the company would match workers' individual donations dollar for dollar. ``During the past several weeks, I received several notes from employees who were eager to contribute to the fund and were eloquent in expressing their appreciation for the company's support for the rebuilding of the churches and communities that were victimized,'' Dillon said in a follow- up companywide note. ``I am extremely proud, but unsurprised, by the compassion, community concern and civic responsibility represented by your contributions to the Burned Churches Fund. It is just another indication of why I feel so strongly about the men and women who make International Paper's team so extraordinary.'' One aspect of this story is perhaps even more extraordinary: International Paper did not publicize its donation--no corporate news conference, no announcement, not even a press release. Dillon apparently did not want the donation to be seen as a bid for publicity. The article you are reading would never have been written if the author had not happened to hear about the donation from a Presbyterian minister who has a friend working at the National Council of Churches. When Sky contacted International Paper headquarters, the publicity staff-- professionals who are paid well to make sure Dillon and the company look good--agreed to provide copies of Dillon's notes to his company's work force but rebuffed a request to interview the CEO for this article as ``not necessary.'' Dozens of black congregations across the South, meanwhile, are eager to sing the praises of International Paper. ``Oh, good!'' Shirley Hines exclaimed when told that Sky was running a story about the International Paper donation. Hines, in charge of the rebuilding committee at Greater Mount Zion Tabernacle Church in Portsmouth, Virginia, says the congregation did not know if the church could be rebuilt after it burned in May 1995; the estimated cost of $340,000 was just too much. International Paper's donation last autumn of wood, doors, wall paneling and other building supplies, however, took care of three-quarters of the cost of materials and let the congregation celebrate Christmas in its new, rededicated church. ``International Paper told us to tell them what we needed. We faxed in a list, and in less than a week it was here. It was unbelievable,'' Hines says. ``If not for International Paper, this church would have had to wait two or three years to reopen, if it ever did.'' Hines recalled the dreary day when she, her pastor and several other church members waited in the rain for the first lumber delivery. When the big truck pulled up, she says, they laughed and shouted and cried and danced in the rain, snapping pictures of the forklift unloading the first pallets of wood that would become their new church. ``It made us realize that God is real,'' she says, ``and He is still in the blessing business.''

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, On February 3, of this year, Carolyn Stradley testified before the Small Business Committee regarding the problems she had starting a paving company. It was one of the most interesting and compelling statements I have heard since I came to the Senate, and I have heard thousands. Mr. President, without further elaboration, I ask that Mrs. Stradley's statement be printed in the Record for all to see and appreciate. The statement follows: Testimony of Carolyn A. Stradley Good morning. Thank you for your time today. My name is Carolyn Stradley, I am the founder and owner of C&S Paving, Inc. in Marietta, Georgia. I was born in the Appalachian Mountains at home in a two- room shack, without electricity or water. I had never seen indoor plumbing until I went to school. My mother died when I was only 11 years old and my father, an alcoholic, walked away. For two years I survived in the mountains, then at 13 years old, I moved to Atlanta, sometimes sleeping in the back of cars and bathing at the bus station. When I entered high school, I did so without front teeth. Working at night, going to school in the day time. I married at 15 years old, was kicked out of school at 16 for being pregnant, became a mother at 17, caring for a totally disabled husband at 21 and became a widow at age 26. I started C&S Paving, Inc. out of necessity, not by choice, from the back of a pickup truck, shoveling asphalt into potholes. But I quickly found out that in 1979 very few people would take a single, 32-year-old woman in the asphalt paving business seriously. When I tried to purchase equipment and trucks in 1979, the sales people just laughed at me. So, I asked my brother, who was unemployed and only had an 8th grade education to work with me for 25 percent of this new company. It was necessary for us to work 14-16 hours a day, so I asked my brother's wife if she would care for the children and answer the telephone--for another 25 percent of the company. When the company was first started, I went to the Small Business Administration and asked for an 8-A package, but was told I did not qualify, but I persisted and finally was able to obtain a package after many years of trying. After its costly completion, and several months of waiting C&S Paving was again denied entrance into the program. However, I did not give up and tried several years later and once again was told that I was not and had not ever been disadvantaged. I saw other people--some third generation company and college graduates--qualify and permitted to negotiate jobs that I was not allowed to bid on. I felt very angry and betrayed. Sadly, it seems to me that the 8(a) Program does not include white females whose circumstances would otherwise qualify them as being disadvantaged. In my case that was totally unfair and an abrogation of Congress' intent for the program. In 1986, I realized that I could no longer work with my brother because of a total different set of values in business and life. I told him if he would just get my name off the personal guarantees, he could have everything. He could not and demanded $500,000 for his and his wife's shares. My options, as I saw them: murder, suicide, or find a way to buy him out. I went to several banks before I found one that believed a woman could run an asphalt paving company, however, they would only make the loan if the SBA would guarantee it. Business was great for the first 6 years into a 10-year loan. However, several of our job sites were hit by two tornadoes and one flood and the most rain that was ever recorded in Georgia. The small bank that I had been dealing with was purchased in 1993 by a large multi-state group. The loan was then ``called'' at a time when I could not work because of weather--the fact that I had never missed a payment for six years meant absolutely nothing to the bank. I then requested a meeting with the Small Business Administration. I met with Fred Stone, District Director for the State of Georgia, Ray Gibeau, Chief, Portfolio Management and Janis Burda, Loan Liquidation Specialist. It was at this meeting that I realized that these three people were completely different than anyone I had ever dealt with before at the SBA. They were very professional, understood small business and were willing to go the extra mile. It was with their help and guidance that C & S Paving was able to restructure the remaining balance of the loan. As a result of SBA's recognition that C & S Paving was a company worth saving, we have grown, prospered and are currently planning to build a new building this year which will enable us to hire about 10 more people this year. Without SBA's help, I would have lost everything that I had worked my whole life for and over 30 period would have lost their jobs. Therefore, I am living proof that the SBA works for this Nation by helping small business create jobs and economic independence for its citizens. My survival has provided encouragement to many other people, especially women who wish to start their own companies. From its humble beginning, by the reinvestment of profits back into the Company, C & S Paving was awarded the largest single contract ever let to a female-owned company through open-competitive bids. Other notable projects we have constructed are the running tracks inside the Olympic Stadium and the Georgia Dome. Additionally, we were honored by President Bush in 1989 at the White House as Second Runner Up for the National Small Business Person of the Year as well as the Small Business Person of the Year Award for 1996 by The Small Business Council of America. I share all of this with you, hopefully to help you understand the passion I feel towards the Small Business Administration. It is not perfect by any means, but to millions of women of this country, who by no fault of their own, do not have a father, husband, the education or community standing to ask for help--SBA's Women Business Ownership Program is their only glimmer of light and hope. Today, you can be the vehicle that helps those that seek to help themselves by recognizing the true value that the Small Business Administration has and the difference it has made in so many lives and the tremendous contributions that small business makes to this country's economy and to the world. This Agency's programs are not a hand out, but truly a hand up. Please allow us to hope. Hope sees the invisible; feels the intangible and hope achieves the impossible.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Bumpers pertaining to the introduction of S. 624 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

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

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, as a part of the Earth Day celebration, I am, once again, introducing legislation to reform the concessions policies of the National Park Service. This bill is very similar to a bill I sponsored in the 103d Congress--listen to this--which passed the Senate 90 to 9 and passed the House 386 to 30, but it is not yet law. It repeals the 1965 Concessions Policy Act which has been over a 30- year-old outrage. My legislation would establish an open competitive process for awarding concessions contracts in units of the National Park System. It will be a competitive process for the first time. These contracts are very lucrative the way they are let under the 1965 act, and the American people are getting shafted and have been for a very long time. Instead of putting the money that we get today back into the Treasury for general purposes, under my bill, the money we get from the contracts will go to a special account for the use of the National Park Service, and Lord only knows every study shows they need it. This will be the 18th year that I have worked to reform the concession policies of this country. The very first oversight hearing I ever held upon becoming chairman of the Parks Subcommittee in 1979 was on this very issue. One has to have a lot of patience to operate around here. Since that time, there has been no telling how many reports, hearings, markups, floor debates there have been. Everybody agrees the existing law ought to be changed, but in 18 years, with the most diligent efforts I can put into it, it has not been changed, simply because the park concessioners have more clout with some Members of the Senate than have I. They have more clout than the American people have with the U.S. Senate. Mr. President, let me just tell you what has been happening. In 1995--that is the latest year for which we have complete information on these concession contracts--in 1995, the United States received just under $16 million in franchise fees on gross concession revenues of $676 million, a whopping 2.4-percent return. These contracts are almost handed down from generation to generation. They probably put them in their will and give them to their first-born son. It is almost impossible to undo one. But the U.S. taxpayer had a 2.4 percent return on $676 million of national park concessions fees last year. In all fairness, let me add this. Under the existing law, a concessioner can also make improvements in the parks in consultation and agreement with the National Park Service. He can make improvements, he might even build a new hotel--all kinds of things like that--and he is entitled then to take that into consideration as a part of his fee. But even when you add that in, even when you add in the amount that concessioners spend to improve the park, which, incidentally, is to their benefit because it invariably increases revenues, that increases the amount we received to $40 million on $676 million, still only a 5.9-percent return. You can invest in a T-bill and do as well, but this is our land, our property, the reason tourists go there and spend their money, because it is a park that Congress, in its infinite wisdom, established. Any property owner in the United States should ask yourself this question: Would you lease your property out for that kind of return when it was producing that kind of revenue for the lessee? You would not even consider it. A 5.9-percent return we are getting now is better than we have received in the past, but listen to this, just to show you how ridiculous the current policy is. You will recall that Matsushita bought MCA, which owned the Yosemite Park and Curry Co., the concessioner at Yosemite. So Matsushita, when they bought this company, inherited the concessions contract at Yosemite, which produces the most concessions revenue of any park in the United States. This will show what happens when you have competition. The people in this place, incidentally, are supposed to believe in capitalism. They believe in competition. They believe if you leave it to the marketplace, everything will work out just hunky-dory, except, it seems, for mining and concessions. So, here was a contract that Matsushita gave up, and whoever got the new contract was going to have to pay off a $62 million note. What happened in this contract, Matsushita gave up the contract, the National Park Foundation took it for 1 day just for transition purposes, and then Delaware North bid and was awarded the new contract, the first time, I believe, in the history of the National Park Service, since the old law, that a contract had been let competitively. Would you like to know what happened? The year before this contract was let, the taxpayers got a return from the Yosemite concessions operations of three-quarters of 1 percent. And the first year--the first year--Delaware North had it under the new, actually competitively let contract; on over $80 million of gross revenues, the taxpayers received about a 16-percent return. Why, Mr. President, do we continue to beat this dog about how important it is to rebuild these facilities in the parks and give a concessioner credit for it and all that? My bill eliminates the anticompetitive measures of the 1965 act, but it also recognizes that all concessions are not the same. People come to me and say, ``How about the small operators? They're struggling to make ends meet.'' Under my bill small family operations grossing less than $500,000 a year would retain a preference to renew their contracts--so would outfitters and guide operators. Even though they are not a major share of the revenue, we probably exempt 80 to 90 percent of the concession operations because most of them are admittedly rather small. But my bill ensures that there will be open competition for the large contracts which generate over 90 percent of the total concessions revenue. As I have already pointed out, the revenues that we get under this bill will go straight into a special account to be used by the National Park Service, similar to the entrance fee legislation just enacted last Congress. Mr. President, one of the major changes that is made in this bill is the elimination of what is known as possessory interest. And here is the way it has been working. A concessioner goes to the National Park Service--this is just a hypothetical case--and says, ``We want to build a hotel for $10 million.'' They work out the deal and the Park Service approves it. What happens at that point is, they start depreciating that hotel. Any businessman does that, of course. So the concessioner starts depreciating this $10 million hotel over a 30- or 40-year period, whatever the IRS requires--let us assume it is a 40-year depreciation-- and at the end of 20 years he has depreciated $5 million and has $5 million left to recover. Under existing law, he is entitled to receive whatever he can get for that hotel. If he surrenders the contract, or is kicked out, or for any other reason, loses his contract, he can receive literally the fair market value of the hotel, which may very well be $15 million. He only paid $10 million, he has a tax deduction of $5 million, and he can turn right around and sell it for $15 million and make that an obligation of the next concessioner. How much nonsense can you put in one law? You think about that. Now, you talk about a bird's nest on the ground, that is possessory interest. Mr. President, there is one other provision in the old law that is equally as egregious. And that is the preferential right an incumbent concessioner gets to renew his contract. Another hypothetical case--you have a 15-year contract, we will say, in Yellowstone National Park. At the end of the 15 years, the Park Service will put out a notice to anybody who might be interested to let them know if they would like to bid on the concessions operation at Yellowstone. So let us assume that I would kind of like to have the Yellowstone contract, so I go to the Park Service and say, ``I would like to bid on this.'' And the Park Service says, ``That's just jakey. You go ahead and bid. Tell us what you would give us for it.'' But let me tell you something, whatever you bid, the guy who has the contract now is entitled meet your bid, and if so, he gets it. You tell me, why would I spend a half-million dollars or whatever it takes preparing a bid on something as significant as the concessions in Yelowstone National Park, knowing that the person who has that contract now need only meet my bid? He may have paid a 2-percent return to the Federal Government last year. I may be willing to pay 10 percent. And the incumbent concessioner knows what the contract is worth. So he comes in and says, ``Well, I'll give you 10 percent, too.'' So I ask you, if you are a businessman, who in his right mind is going to go out there and spend a lot of money preparing a bid, knowing that the person who has the contract right now only need match your bid? I hear a lot of talk on the floor of the Senate about good old capitalism and good old competition and how it solves all problems. This is the most egregious policy I can imagine and yet it has been going on for years and years. But if we pass this bill it will not go on any more. Mr. President, we have made some progress through the efforts of the administration. However, they have gone about as far as they can go just doing things by regulation. They cannot do very much more. But I give a lot of credit to Bruce Babbitt and President Clinton for at least trying to bring some equity into this without changing the law. But you know, we have a lot of Senators here who have good friends who had the concession contract on some park in their State for 40 years, and they just cannot see fit to change the law. You know, the other night I was watching some show on NBC about mining and how egregious our mining policies are. I have worked on that for about 8 years. And I think this year may finally be the year because it is getting to be a kind of a political hot potato for people who are not from mining States to continue to allow that kind of ripoff, rape, and pillage of the taxpayers. But I can tell you it is not a bit worse than this concessions policy we have had for all these years. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I compliment my distinguished friend from North Dakota on his very prescient remarks, which I think are right on target. I listened to a lot of the debate today on the question of taxation, and I must say I find it puzzling. I do not really mean this, but I say quite often that I wish everybody had the opportunity to live through the Depression. My brother and sister and I were lucky. We had something to eat. We also had devoted parents and that makes up for a multitude of problems. However, not everyone is as fortunate. Some people need a helping hand. Nobody likes the idea of taxes. I coughed up a sizable amount yesterday to the IRS. I did not particularly enjoy it. But I have never begrudged the taxes I paid, even though, as a U.S. Senator, I see a lot of waste. I see money misspent. I see priorities misplaced. And sometimes it is kind of a bitter pill to swallow. But I can not accept the idea that some Senators that have propounded today that somehow there is something unholy and evil about paying taxes. As Justice Holmes said, taxes are necessary ``to make our society a civilized one.'' To complain about the taxes we pay in order to live in a civilized society is unfathomable to me. My brother, who is my best friend, does not like to pay taxes. I keep reminding him the thing he and my sister and I had that a lot of children did not have when we were growing up, is that we chose our parents well. A lot of children do not have that luxury. The fact is that the Federal Government has done a tremendous amount of good with our tax funds. I think about the house we lived in and the fact that the water well was only about 10 steps away from the outhouse, and people died of typhoid fever in the summertime and we could not figure out why. All of a sudden, Franklin Roosevelt was elected President, the first President of the United States who began to treat the South as a part of the United States and not as a conquered nation. So, we began to get paved streets, running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, natural gas, housing, medical help, free shots against typhoid fever and smallpox at the schoolhouse, by a nurse paid for by those insidious taxes that we pay. Mr. President, if I could just list all of the things that have happened since I was 10 years old, that have made us the great Nation we are, not one single Member of the U.S. Senate would take any of them back--not one. I am thinking about the housing programs we have, the farm programs we have, the medical research that we do, the medical help we give people. I think about the bank insurance fund. If we had not had the FSLIC fund when the S&L's were all going broke, you think about what a catastrophe that would have been in this country. That is what happened during the Depression, the banks went broke. And my mother, who had carefully saved $1,100 selling cream and eggs and chickens on Saturday, lost every nickel of it when the bank went under. And she grieved about it until her dying day. Who would turn their back on the environmental improvements we have made in this country? Mr. President, 65 percent of the streams were unfishable and unswimmable. Now 65 percent are swimmable and fishable, and nobody here wants to do anything but go to 100 percent clean water and air for our children and grandchildren yet to come. I could go on with many other things the Government has done to benefit us all. For instance, we have dammed the rivers that used to flood every spring. My mother and father used to go down to the Arkansas River every April, see people straggling along the road who had lost their homes and all their possessions, pick them up, take them home, keep them for a couple of nights until the water receded, and take them back to the area they had called their homes. We dammed the Arkansas River. It not only provides navigation but recreation and flood control. And people in those same areas of Arbuckle Island do not have to worry about it anymore. And now some in Congress want a constitutional amendment that would require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. You could not even correct a mistake with less than two-thirds of the vote. You could not close a tax loophole with less than two-thirds of the vote. It would favor the wealthy, who would be assured their taxes would never go up. And it would be a terrible disservice to the people who rely on Government services--yes, even welfare recipients. Like I say, everybody did not have Bill and Lattie Bumpers for parents. We talk about family values. I have the three greatest children and the greatest family a man could have. I know all about family values. I put mine up against those of anybody in the world. Yet you and I know there are a lot of children in this country who would be better off almost anyplace than where they are. So, I believe in helping these children. We keep on building more prisons and spending $25,000 a year for every person we incarcerate, and if we had given that child an education at roughly half the cost, he would not be in prison. When I was Governor I used to go to the prisons and talk, sit and have lunch with them, interview them, talk to them. I never met one with a college degree, though there probably were a few. I never met one who owned his own home. I didn't meet very many who did not come from a broken home. Mr. President, I stand here on April 15 and we are still without a budget. Instead, we are wasting the peoples' time with a debate between the Democrats and Republicans about taxes. So far as I am concerned, the whole country loses with that debate. If you really want to restore confidence in the American political system and you want to stop the alienation of people's attitudes toward Congress and what goes on here, do two things: Balance the budget and change the way you finance campaigns. Anybody who thinks a democracy can survive when the laws we pass and the people we elect are totally dependent on how much money we put on it is dreaming. And, if you want to stop alienation and really cause people to dance in the streets, balance the budget. In 1981, Fritz Hollings, Bill Bradley and Dale Bumpers were the only three Senators who voted for Ronald Reagan's spending cuts and against his tax cuts. I can show you absolute documented proof, if everybody had voted that way we would have had a balanced budget in 1985. But, no, the herd instinct swept across this body and we voted for those massive tax cuts that guaranteed the budget was going to go out of control. And it did. Just as I screamed from this very spot in 1981. Here we are, back to the same old stand. It reminds me of trying to housebreak my little dog. I just could not do it. His memory was just too short. And he is not alone. The memories of people in this body are awful short, too. Nobody seems to remember how we got an additional $3 trillion in debt from 1981 to 1992. So, it is nonsense to talk about a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. Even the Articles of Confederation, which started out by saying you have to have 9 of 13 States agree to raise taxes before you can do it, had to be changed because they knew that would not work. Mr. President, I have tried to make two points today. As I have said many times before, if it had not been for a generous, compassionate, caring Government, who had taxes to pay for my education on the GI bill, I would not be standing here right now. I have been trying to pay back this great Nation, the oldest democracy on Earth, with an organic law which we call the Constitution; next to the Holy Bible the most sacred to me. And every time we get in a tough political spot somebody says, ``Well, let's amend the Constitution.'' When I think about some of the people here trying to tinker with what Ben Franklin and James Madison and John Adams and Alexander Hamilton did, crafted the greatest document and delivered under that document the greatest Nation, the greatest democracy on Earth, and people are constantly trying to destroy it, undo it--I shudder when I hear some of my colleagues wanting to undo what the greatest assemblage of minds ever assembled under one roof did to bring this all about. What do they want to do? Make it impossible to raise taxes because the rich would have to pay. I am not going to be caught voting to cut Medicare and welfare and Medicaid and have somebody come to me and say, ``Did you use it for balancing the budget?'' No. ``Did you use it for education, so that everybody can have a college education?'' No. ``Did you put it into housing? The environment?'' No. ``What on Earth did you do with it?'' Why, we cut taxes for the wealthiest 5 percent of the people in America. That is what we did with it. I will be 6 feet under before you catch me voting for something like that. I just came over here to say that the citizenry of this country, when you stop and talk to them from the heart, if not the head, talk to them from the heart and the head, let them know we are the luckiest people alive. Yes, I paid a lot of taxes yesterday, and I did not like it, but I will tell you what I do like. I enjoy living in a civilized society where the crime rate is down, where the unemployment rate has been dramatically reduced, where inflation is under control, where people have jobs and where some Senators are trying to figure out a way to educate every child in this country who wants it. So, no, I am not voting for any of this nonsense that would require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. That is not a democracy. I consider myself just about the luckiest man that ever lived, No. 1, because of my parents and No. 2, because I got elected to the U.S. Senate after serving my State as Governor for 4 years. Why? It is the greatest place in the world to keep faith with humankind, to give other people the same kind of chances you had. So I am very fortunate to be an American, and I did not begrudge the taxes I paid yesterday, just as I never begrudged the taxes I have paid, and I think most of the Members of the Senate agree with that when they stop and really reflect on it. I yield the floor.