Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, in 1982, when this body adopted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, we set, as the distinguished chairman of the committee has said, the amount the utilities would pay to build a permanent repository at 1 mill per kilowatt hour. In 14 years, we have collected $8 billion. The total cost of the program is $34 billion. The utilities' share of that cost is $27 billion. So we are looking for the 1 mill fee to produce $27 billion. The defense program's share is $7 billion. The interest on the excess that sits in the Treasury is expected to make up the balance. In 14 years, the Secretary of Energy has had the discretion, which we gave the Secretary, to raise this 1 mill fee to whatever it would take to pay the utilities' share of the program's cost. In 14 years, he or she has never seen fit to raise it. There is no point in tinkering with it now because it is working fine. If there ever was a case where we are trying to fix a problem that does not exist, this is it. Leave the law as it is. We are adding $2 billion to the $27 billion cost now with the Murkowski bill. That is going to up the ante $2 billion. One mill is fine for now. The utilities are happy with it. It is producing the amount of money we want. There is absolutely no reason for this amendment. I do not think we will have to raise it, but we might. Mr. President, I yield back such time as I have.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the pending second-degree amendment caps the fee paid by the utilities for nuclear waste disposal services. That sounds simple enough, but to understand the amendment we must first understand the funding provisions in both the Murkowski substitute, which the pending amendment amends, and how both will affect the nuclear waste program's current funding mechanism. One of the fundamental principles of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is that the full cost of disposing of nuclear waste should be borne by the waste's generators. In the case of the military waste, that means the Treasury and the taxpayers. In the case of commercial power plant waste, that means the utilities and their ratepayers. The existing nuclear waste program will cost about $34 billion. Of this amount, the utilities are responsible for $27 billion and the defense program is responsible for $7 billion. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the utilities' share is recovered through a fee on electricity generated by nuclear power. The 1982 law set the fee at 1 mill, which is one tenth of a cent, per kilowatt-hour. Congress assumed in 1982 that the fee would need to be adjusted from time to time for inflation, to meet higher than expected costs, of if the number of plants paying the fee changed. Thus, the existing law gives the Secretary of Energy the power to adjust the fee. The Secretary has never used his adjustment authority. The fee remains at 1 mill despite 14 years of inflation and despite GAO concerns that the fee is not recovering the program's full cost. DOE admits that the fee will only collect about $19 billion of the $27 billion the utilities will owe. DOE is counting on interest on the unspent balance in the Nuclear Waste Fund to make up the shortfall. The utilities will contribute even less than $19 billion if any nuclear power plants shut down before the end of their useful lives, as many are expected to do as the electricity industry becomes more competitive. Because of budget scoring roles, the fees collected from the utilities do not offset spending on the program. As a result, the nuclear waste fee takes in more money than is appropriated to the program each year. In fiscal year 1997, for example, the utilities are expected to pay $649 million compared to $182 million appropriated to the waste program. The Murkowski substitute tries to get around these budget constraints without violating the Budget Act. The approach taken in the substitute, while convoluted, works. First, the substitute preserves the existing 1 mil mandatory fee. Second, it creates a new offsetting fee, which will be set at whatever amount is needed to recover the amount appropriated to the program each year. The amount of the offsetting fee will fluctuate from year to year. To prevent double recovery from the two fees, the amount of the mandatory fee will be reduced by the amount of the offsetting fee collected. Thus, the combined fees may total more than 1 mill but will never be less than 1 mill. The substitute eliminates the Secretary of Energy's existing authority to adjust the fee, but it makes up for it by allowing Congress to raise the fee to keep up with program spending through the annual appropriations process. The Murkowski substitute requires the Secretary of Energy to propose an increase or decrease to the mandatory 1-mill fee if he finds that the combined fees are collecting too little or too much money. The Secretary's proposal would not take effect until approved by a joint resolution adopted under expedited procedures. The expedited procedures provided under the substitute waive Budget Act points of order. The Domenici first-degree amendment reinstates any applicable Budget Act points of order. That's only fair. The Murkowski second-degree amendment, however, has nothing to do with the points of order restored by the Domenici amendment. The Murkowski second-degree amendment caps the combined total of the two fees in the underlying substitute at 1 mill. The Murkowski amendment repudiates the full-cost recovery principle of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and shifts part of the cost of the nuclear waste program from the utilities and their ratepayers to the Treasury and the taxpayers. How much of the program's cost will be shifted to the taxpayers is unclear but the 1-mill fee will certainly be inadequate to pay the program's full cost. GAO already says it is inadequate. DOE says it will be inadequate if future interest rates are not high enough to offset the current shortfall between what the utilities will pay--$19 billion--and what their share of the program will cost--$27 billion. The underlying bill, S. 104, will increase the cost of the program by $2 billion for interim storage. Competition will cause utilities to shut down some nuclear plants before the end of their useful lives, thereby decreasing the amount of the fees paid. Under current law, the Secretary of Energy can correct any shortfall by raising the fee, but S. 104 and the Murkowski substitute strips the Secretary of that power. Even under the Murkowski substitute, though, Congress could still correct any shortfall in future appropriations acts. But the Murkowski second-degree amendment forecloses any opportunity for DOE or Congress to address a future shortfall except by joint resolution. The pending amendment fundamentally alters the bargain the Government struck with the utilities in 1982. That bargain was that the Federal Government would take on the responsibility for disposing of the utilities' waste in a permanent repository and, in return, the utilities would pay the program's full cost or the repository program and, in the meantime, fulfill their responsibility for storing their own waste at their reactors until the repository was ready or else pay the Government extra to store it at a Federal site. The nuclear industry and its Republican supporters have made much of the sanctity of the nuclear waste contracts. They have complained loudly about DOE's inability to meet the 1998 waste acceptance date in the contract and have alleged the Government owes the utilities billions of dollars in damages for this failure. The Murkowski substitute already rewrites the bargain struck in 1982 by making the Government responsible for temporary storage. The Murkowski second-degree amendment further alters the bargain struck in 1982 by relieving the utilities of their obligation to pay the full cost of the now expanded program.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BUMPERS. I said 20 minutes equally divided.

Mr. BUMPERS. I suggest 20 minutes equally divided.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, this is fairly simple and will only take about 10 minutes. Mr. President, last July a D.C. circuit court ruled that the Waste Policy Act of 1982 required the Department of Energy to take the utilities' nuclear waste in 1998. The utilities and the public service commissions brought two separate actions, and the court consolidated them. They argued that DOE was clearly under an obligation to take this waste in 1998. And the court ruled in their favor saying--this is good news for my adversaries on this amendment--``In conclusion, we hold that the petitioners' reading of the statute comports with the plain language of the measure. * * * Thus, we hold that section 302(a)(5)(B) creates an obligation in DOE, reciprocal to the utilities' obligation to pay, to start disposing of the [nuclear waste] no later than January 31, 1998.'' You may think that the utilities have all the best of it as a result of that decision, and they may very well have. But as you know, there is a case pending now in the D.C. Circuit in which the utility companies are seeking a judgment seeking to have the fees that they are paying put in escrow. I am not sure what they get out of that. But the purpose of this amendment is very simple. The District of Columbia Circuit right now has this action of the utility companies under consideration. As I said, the utility companies are asking that the fees they are paying, which is hundreds of millions of dollars a year, be put in escrow. And in my opinion, in order for the court to rule on that, the court is going to have to again look at the contract--not the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which they interpreted in last July's decision--bear in mind we are talking about two different lawsuits. Last summer, in July, the court was interpreting the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. This time, in my opinion, they have to look at the contract and see if the contract that was negotiated pursuant to that act requires the Department of Energy to take this waste. So here is my amendment. It is written in the mother tongue, which is in English, so everybody here ought to be able to understand it. This is a sense-of-the-Senate amendment. It states that it is the sense of the Senate that the Department of Energy's failure to meet the January 1998 deadline was caused by Congress' failure to appropriate funds the program needed and other Government actions beyond DOE's control, and that the court should take the contract's provisions on excusable delays into consideration when it rules on the pending lawsuits. As I said, that is the mother tongue, and it is not hard to understand. Look at the contract. See what the contract says. Is the United States, or the Department of Energy, under the terms of the contract, excused for its inability to take this waste in 1998? Bear in mind that court last summer did not find DOE liable for a breach of contract. A breach of contract is the failure without a legal excuse to perform the contract. All you brilliant lawyers here understand that. We have a contract. That is what the court is going to be construing. This is a sense of the Senate calling to the court's attention some language that was in the contract. And I have not heard this debated one minute since this debate started. The question is, was there a failure to have a permanent repository ready to take this waste in 1998? Was that their fault? I submit that it was not. But that is not what we are debating here. That is my opinion. My opinion is, and I really defy anybody to say otherwise, that the reason they didn't have it ready is because the Government didn't appropriate the money fast enough to do it. Listen to this. Here is what the contract says. The Government will not be liable ``for damages caused by a failure to perform its obligations'' under the contract ``if such failure arises out of causes beyond the control and without the fault or negligence'' of DOE. That is simple enough. Anybody can understand that. The contract goes on to state that ``acts of the Government''--that is us, colleagues-- ``acts of the Government'' that ``cause delay in scheduled acceptance or transport'' of utility waste shall be an excusable failure by the Department of Energy. It says that DOE shall notify the utilities of such a delay and ``the parties will readjust their schedules, as appropriate, to accommodate such delay.'' I don't know how many lawyers there are in the U.S. Senate. But I promise you there isn't a lawyer here worth the powder of blowing you know where that hasn't had cases exactly like this. All contracts provide for excusable delays. What do you do if you have a delay that is beyond your control? What if you have a tornado blow a project away while you are right in the middle of it? Normally you would have insurance to cover that. That is normally covered by contracts. Here they simply say, if there is any justifiable reason for the DOE not being ready to take this fuel in January of 1998, that is a legitimate excuse and that includes actions by the Government, and the actions of the Government was we didn't appropriate the money to get the repository built. Now the utilities are coming in and saying, ``We don't care about the language of the contract. We want you to take it, or put our money in escrow.'' There have been all kinds of figures. I am not going to debate the amount of money involved here. I have heard a lot of figures thrown around about what this is going to cost the Government by not taking this spent fuel, and those figures are so exaggerated, if you look at the details of what the cost is likely to be, it is exaggerated by a magnitude of about 300 percent. But it is not correct for Senators on the floor of the U.S. Senate to suggest--indeed, openly state, as I heard some do--that this is already a done deal and that DOE has already been found liable. That is not true. The contract is now under consideration by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. I submit to you that if anybody is to blame it is us. We are the ones who kept DOE from being prepared to take this. So, Mr. President, I think it is only appropriate. After all, we are not trying to interfere with the judicial proceedings. We are simply saying it is a sense of the Senate that this language which I just read to you should be very carefully considered by the court. There not only is not nothing wrong with that, there is everything in the world right about it. And the court is going to interpret the contract, and here is the clear language of it. I say in my sense-of-the-Senate amendment that the court should take the contract's provisions on excusable delays into consideration when it rules on the pending lawsuit. Why wouldn't it? DOE didn't put that language in there just to make the contract a little longer. They put it in there so that they would have an out if there was an excusable delay. There has been an excusable delay. All I am saying is it is the sense of the Senate that we ought to call that to the attention of the court. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I call up my amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I came to the U.S. Senate in 1975. At that time, the nuclear debate was raging full blast. ``Shall we or shall we not build more nuclear-electrical-generating plants?'' I just finished 4 years as Governor of my State. And we had built two nuclear plants up on the Arkansas River. I believe the total cost of both of those plants was $400 million. It was represented to me at the time, as Governor, that that would be by far the cheapest power we would ever know anything about. But after I came to the Senate and began to investigate the feasibility and the advisability of taking this country down the nuclear path, I quickly came to the conclusion that I would resist any additional nuclear plants. There was another highlight on the front burner called the Clinch River breeder reactor to be built on the Clinch River down in Tennessee. I remember in 1981, the Republicans took over this place, and Howard Baker, the Senator from Tennessee, and one of the finest men ever to serve in this body, became majority leader. I was trying to keep any additional nuclear plants from being licensed--and it was not a tough chore. A lot of people had made up their minds at that point that the nuclear option was not a good one. I fought for about 4 years to kill the Clinch River breeder. But I was up against the majority leader. And as everybody here knows, as the old revenuer said, when they announced United States versus Jones, he turned to his lawyer and said, ``Them don't sound like very fair odds to me.'' And it was not very fair odds to go up against the majority leader on the Clinch River breeder, which was going to be built in his beloved Tennessee. Howard Baker could always just pull out that one extra vote he needed. The vote was always close, but when you are majority leader, you know, you can just call somebody over and say, ``I need your vote,'' and you usually get it. Finally, one year I was ahead by about six or seven votes as the votes were being cast, and I think Senator Baker decided that he was done for, and he turned everybody loose that had committed to him who did not really like the idea of the Clinch River breeder reactor and were only voting for it to accommodate him. He turned them loose, and I think we won that day by about 70 to 30. Happily, that was the end of the Clinch River breeder. I had a group of people from France in my office this afternoon, some politicians and some deeply involved in the electrical industry. They wanted to talk about the new concept of restructuring the electricity industry in this country to go to retail competition. They are doing this in France. They are doing it in Germany and doing it all over Western Europe. And they wanted to talk to me about my bill. One of them said, ``Senator, we understand that you are the Senator who killed the breeder reactor.'' ``Mais oui.'' He said, ``If you had it to do over again, would you do it again?'' ``You bet.'' France is heavily dependent on breeder reactors. But they are also in the business of reprocessing and using MOX to generate power, and so on. I guess I am digressing a little bit to say about the breeder reactor, it is dead, dead; and I am glad it is dead. The reason I did not like the breeder reactor is the same reason I did not like nuclear power, period. It is wonderful. It is the cleanest power you can have. You see that nice, clear white smoke coming out of those smokestacks in Russellville, AR. And you know there is nothing polluting about that plant. But if you look inside, if you look inside the plant and you see those fuel rods, you have to ask yourself, since these things are going to be radioactive for thousands of years, how do you dispose of them? That is the reason I turned against nuclear power. I could not figure out a way on Earth that we were going to environmentally, acceptably dispose of those fuel rods. So now, Mr. President, we are here today debating that very proposition and 35,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel created by the electrical generating companies of this country and thousands of tons more by the Pentagon. It has to be disposed of. And we have been laboring with the question of how we are going to do it. As we lawyers say, ``Since the memory of man runneth not.'' We are doing our very best to keep faith with the people of this country and dispose of it in a way that they will be able to sleep at night. Let me tell you one other thing. If we dispose of it the way the Senator from Alaska proposes right now, we may be transporting that stuff all over the country two or three times. And, you know, I live in a little town of 2,500 people, Charleston, AR. You are being addressed right now almost entirely by the South Franklin County Bar Association. I was about the only lawyer in town--it is so little. But if I were a lawyer in Charleston, I would be very apprehensive about all that nuclear power coming from Russellville, AR, right up Highway 22. And the Presiding Officer knows exactly the location I am talking about. Coming right up Highway 22 through Charleston, AR, headed for Yucca Mountain. So, what did we do? In 1982, we passed a bill called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. A good bill. We said to the electrical industry in this country, the nuclear electrical industry, that you pay a fee to the U.S. Government every year. We will use your money to find and develop a permanent repository for this nuclear fuel. We passed the bill. The deal was cut. We started collecting the fees. Both sides operating in ultimate good faith. No shenanigans. You pay us a fee every year and we will use it to find a site. We found a site called Yucca Mountain in the home State of my good friend, the junior Senator from Nevada. I am on the same side of the Senator from Nevada. And if it were Arkansas instead of Nevada that they were putting it in, I would be like him sitting in my seat on this floor 24 hours a day trying to keep faith with my constituents and saying, what have we done to deserve 35,000 tons of nuclear waste dumped in our backyard? And I am sad about that. It is one of those things. Somebody has to do it. So we find Yucca Mountain and everybody says this is the best possible site--not the perfect site, may not be the site ultimately chosen--but it is the site we are choosing to start spending this fee the utilities are paying us. So, what have we done since 1982? We have dug a 5-mile hole, a tunnel in Yucca Mountain in anticipation of it ultimately being decided that it is by far the best place to locate this spent fuel. We have spent $4.8 billion on that 5-mile hole. And we are going to spend a lot more before it is perfected. But, Mr. President, the reason we stand here today debating this bill is this. We said to the utility industry, we will take your fuel--we being the U.S. Government, the Energy Department--we will take this 35,000 tons of spent fuel and we will start taking it in about January 1998. That is coming up. It will be here before you know it. Now, the utilities have been operating in good faith, too. They have been paying their fees in anticipation of getting rid of this stuff which they are storing onsite at their nuclear plants. Again, the Presiding Officer, I know, has been to those two nuclear sites in Arkansas. Some of it is lying out in dry casks. Some of it is in water. But it is stored on site. We have 110 nuclear generating plants in this country and 76 storage sites. For example, we only have one storage site in Russellville, but two generators. That is not uncommon in this country. So we have the 110 nuclear generating plants generating more and more spent fuel and storing it at a considerable cost to them. There is no denying this is very expensive to the utilities. So they say: A deal is a deal. In 1982 we said we would start paying you, and you said January 1998 you would start taking the fuel off our hands and we could quit building all the facilities and storing it. It is kind of ominous. Most Senators, I suppose, have been to the nuclear plants and looked at those things. You look at the pool of water, it has a very strange color, and the nuclear rods are in that water. I have never seen a real dry cask they put it in. My legislative director has a small mock-up model of a cask they put it in. What they will be doing, if all goes through according to S. 104, they will take that fuel out of water and put in the steel casks. The casks are big, they are expensive. They will put those fuel rods inside those casks, those that are not already there, and they will start transporting them from all over the United States to Nevada. You lucky dog. They will be transporting them to Nevada in those casks. What the Senator from Alaska says, ``We will pour a gigantic concrete slab and we will carry that stuff out there to Yucca Mountain.'' Not inside the mountain. This is somewhere around Yucca Mountain. I do not know where. We have the 5-mile tunnel built. We have a little more boring to do. But we will pour the concrete slab, transport the fuel out there, and just leave it out there in the open. Now, this sounds simple, but it is a pretty expensive undertaking. What it means is if S. 104 passes and the President vetoes it and we override his veto, it will cost about $4 billion over the next 5 years instead of the $2 billion we are planning to spend on the permanent repository. Mr. President, I tell you something interesting that has nothing to do with the debate. If, in August of next year--bear in mind there will be a determination made next August on whether or not Yucca Mountain is suitable. Incidentally, the reason we are here today is because the dates are at cross purposes. We have to start taking the fuel in January, but we do not know whether Yucca Mountain will be determined to be suitable until August of next year. So we are required to start taking the stuff 8 months before we know whether Yucca Mountain will be the ultimate repository. Now, if it is, if next August we find it suitable, there are still a lot of licensing procedures to go through, but basically we are in fat city. Everybody will be happy because Yucca Mountain has been determined to be suitable, and we will take all this waste that S. 104 wants to take out and put on a concrete slab. In the year 2010 we will start taking it and putting it in that hole, that tunnel in the mountain, and we will seal that sucker up. You think about it. We will put 84,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in this tunnel in Yucca Mountain and seal that thing. No guards and no monitors walking up and down hallways, putting a Geiger counter on it and see what the radiation is that is coming out of it. We will seal it up forever. Now, before I get to the end of this tale, let me go back a moment and say this stuff is going to be in Yucca Mountain for thousands and thousands of years. And you know why? Because that is how long it is radioactive. You know what we are debating here today? Ten years. We are saying we cannot wait 10 years to make sensible decisions that affect the lives of every man, woman, and child in America. We have to do it right now because the utility industry is unhappy. They want us to take it now and transport it to Yucca Mountain and get it out of their back door. If they would have listened to me 20 years ago, they would not have a problem because they would not have all that waste. I was not that powerful then. I am not that powerful now either. But think about this: We are talking about planting 84,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in Yucca Mountain, to be reposed for thousands and thousands of years, and S. 104 says we cannot wait 10 years to find out. We cannot wait until August of next year to determine whether or not Yucca Mountain is a suitable repository. This is a monumental decision. We are not talking about the Kentucky Derby. We are talking about thousands of tons of lethal spent fuel and how we will dispose of it safely so the American people can sleep at night. I share the concern of the Senator from Alaska about disposing of this stuff. I am not trying to drag my feet. Everybody knows we have to dispose of this stuff. We are talking about what is the best way to do it. What is in the national interest? What is sensible? What is the safest way to do it? It is tragic that the Energy Department has to renege on its agreement, but it cannot help it. It was not their fault. It really was not anybody's fault that we did not get this all done by 1998. But the Energy Department says certainly if it is found suitable, we believe we can start taking this stuff by the year 2010 and doing it properly and in a way that everybody will find to be suitable and satisfying. So what happens under this bill? If Yucca Mountain is found to be unsuitable next August, you have to go ahead and build this thing anyway, this interim storage site, unless the President of the United States finds an alternative site and Congress approves that alternative site all within 2 years. If anybody believes you can do that, hold up your hand. That is an absolutely impossible condition in S. 104. The President cannot find another site and get Congress to approve that site within 2 years. We have been working on Yucca Mountain forever, and now we are in a posture of finally concluding a happy end to this situation. But even if Yucca Mountain is found to be unsuitable, S. 104 of the Senator from Alaska will still require that every pound of nuclear waste in this country be transported to Yucca Mountain, even though that is not going to be the permanent repository site. So what happens then? We find another permanent repository site. We will load it all up and bring it back through Charleston, AR, once again. That will make the citizens happy. They already had the daylights scared out of them bringing the fuel through their hometowns once. Now they will get it again. So why take it in the first place? Why not at least give the administration and the utility industry an opportunity to work out some kind of an arrangement whereby we will pay them--they are suing us now, and frankly they have a good lawsuit. I do not deny that. They have a good lawsuit. We agreed to take it in 1998, and we cannot do it. So we will have to pay. So my question is why not pay them to leave it where it is for a few months until we can make a decision about the suitability of Yucca Mountain and proceed the way we have been proceeding? Now, Mr. President, let me just close by making something of a confession. It is tempting to me to support this proposition. I would not vote for S. 104 under any circumstances, but the concept set out in S. 104 makes it very appealing and very attractive. As I say, I would not vote for an interim storage site right now because we are coming up on the time when we will know with some degree of certainty whether or not Yucca Mountain will be the place. Can we not wait? America, this is the central question. Can we not wait 10 years to determine that this is the safest place in the world and the best place in the world to store this stuff for thousands of years? What is 10 years in the scheme of the thousands of years that this stuff will be stored there? The options are not good either way. I do not blame the utilities for wanting to get rid of the stuff, but I do not blame us for not wanting to take it. It is folly in the extreme for us to take that stuff out there and spend an extra $2 billion to put in a concrete slab when we know, or will know next August almost to a reasonable degree of certainty, a year from now we will know whether or not we will be able to use Yucca Mountain, and if we are, would it not be infinitely better to transport that fuel one time--not twice, not three times--one time, to put it in a site in which we will all feel comfortable? Mr. President, I know there are plenty of votes in this place to pass this bill. I know the President will veto it when it is presented to him. We will see what happens after that. I am trying to call for a degree of sanity and reasonableness and saying I would like to get rid of it, too. Nobody has any stronger desire to get rid of this nuclear waste than I have. The Senator from Nevada and I will probably be on opposite sides next time. If Yucca Mountain is found to be suitable, you can bet I will vote to put it there. I have not supported the Senators from Nevada because I like them, because they are friends; I supported them because I thought they were right. I have supported the Energy Department and the administration's position on this because I think they are right. I am asking my colleagues, I know they are getting a lot of pressure on them both from the industry and the party and different people, but I tell you something, when you start playing politics with this issue, I plead for my colleagues to remember, people may disagree with you, but they like people who stand up for what they believe, even when it is not popular. People sometimes say to me, why do you guys not screw up your nerve and do something right, something courageous for a change? I hear that all the time. Do you know what they mean by courageous? Unpopular. If it is popular, it is not courageous. Here is a bill that is very complicated, and the American people are not homed in on it. The people here know what they are doing. I am asking, for Pete's sake, listen to this debate and do what they think is sensible, in the best interests of the country. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a fellow Arkansan who is soon to retire after a long and distinguished career in Arkansas agriculture. Jack G. Justus has devoted 44 years of service to Arkansas agriculture as a county agricultural agent and as a staff member of the Arkansas Farm Bureau. Under Jack's leadership as executive vice president for the past 15 years, the Arkansas Farm Bureau has nearly doubled in size to more than 200,000 members. ``Progressive Farmer'' honored Jack Justus as its 1996 Man of the Year in Service to Agriculture. Throughout his career, Jack has served on numerous boards and commissions, including the Future Farmers of America Foundation, the 4-H Club Foundation, Arkansas State Fair, and other groups committed to the improvement of life for farm youth and the rural community. Mr. President, on June 1, 1997, Jack Justus will retire from his administrative duties at the Farm Bureau. This native Arkansan, life- long resident, product of our State's educational system, and dedicated public servant is certainly deserving of a long and satisfying retirement. Our State has benefited greatly from Jack Justus' stewardship and I know I join literally thousands from all across our State who join me in saying thank you.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise to pay tribute to my colleague in the House, Speaker Gingrich. For those of you who think that I must need a saliva test for saying that, here is why. It was earlier this week in a press conference, that Speaker Gingrich made a very responsible statement. He said that this Congress should forgo tax cuts until we balance the budget--an eminently sensible, unassailable proposition insofar as I am concerned. I expected him to get the reception he got. Some of his very best friends in the House jumped on him and said, ``You have betrayed us.'' Thirty House Members sent him a hot letter, saying, ``What on Earth are you thinking?'' I don't know what he was thinking, but I assume he was thinking the same thing I was thinking, and that is that the snake oil of cutting taxes and balancing the budget makes no sense whatever. We have tried it. Ten years from now or 20 years from now, when memories have faded a little further, I would rather expect people to say, yes, we can cut taxes and balance the budget. But we are, really, only 4 years away from the end of George Bush's tenure as President; we are 16 years away from 1981 when the U.S. Senate took leave of its senses and passed a massive tax cut on the proposition that if we would do that and simultaneously balance the budget, which was at that moment $87 billion out of kilter, that we could balance the budget by 1984 if we just bought into this proposition that we needed to cut taxes monumentally to stimulate the economy. But I am again happy to report to my colleagues I did not buy that snake oil. There were 11 Senators--believe it--11 U.S. Senators who said, ``This is crazy. It will never work. It makes no sense whatever. It violates economic principle, violates normal sanity.'' But we went ahead and did it, and I will never forget that fall day when President Reagan, at Rancho Mirage, signed the bill in front of about 100 television cameras, saying, ``You have given me the tools. Now I'll do the job and nobody will be left behind.'' Here is what happened. Twelve years later, we had accumulated $2.5 trillion in additional debt to go with the already $1 trillion debt that we had incurred during the first 200 years of this country's history--actually less than that. But from the date we adopted and ratified the Constitution in 1789, until the day we passed that tax cut in 1981, the debt had accumulated to less than $1 trillion. Twelve short years later, we had increased that trillion-dollar debt by $3 trillion, and the national debt at that time then became $4 trillion, and we have been striving to dig ourselves out of that hole ever since. Mr. President, 3 or 4 weeks ago I was walking out that door to go back to my office and one of the most conservative Republican Senators in the U.S. Senate, who happens to be a good friend, came over to me and he said, ``I'll tell you, Dale, confidentially, I've never seen things better. The economy is as good as it ever gets. A lot of things are going right in this country.'' I almost fainted. I said, ``I could not agree with you more.'' I sometimes wonder why people are not dancing in the streets. Since 1992 we have taken the deficit from $290 billion to $107 billion in 4 short years. The unemployment rate in this country is the lowest in years. Some economists say you you cannot get it much lower than 5.3 or 5.4 percent. Interest rates are at a manageable level. And this morning, everybody who read the Washington Post saw a feature story about how the deficit is continuing to go down. Let me back up. The President sent his budget over here and he said: In 1997, the deficit will be about $127 billion. It will be about the same in 1998. This morning the newspaper reports that because of this economy, enjoying the longest sustained growth since Dwight Eisenhower was President, even CBO, which is very conservative in their projections, says the deficit this year is going to be down to $115 billion. But other very reputable economists say, no, you are underestimating the taxes the people of this country are going to pay this year because the economy is doing just fine.They say, we believe the deficit will be under $100 billion. I am the eternal optimist. I like to believe that last statement, that the deficit will be below $100 billion, turns out to be true, in which case we will have done something that is unprecedented in this country. We will have had 5 sustained years of deficit reduction. Do you want the economy to continue as it is now and have this sustained growth that we have been enjoying? I will tell you a simple way to do it. You send a message to the American people that the U.S. Congress has come to its senses, and decided to forgo tax cuts of any kind until the United States budget is in balance. Then tell them, on top of that, this year's deficit is not going to be $99 billion; we're going to further reduce it to $90 billion or $85 billion. I can tell you, Wall Street will jump with joy. Why would we be considering tax cuts of $193 billion, almost $200 billion? Why would the U.S. Senate be considering a $200 billion tax cut over the next 5 years and $508 billion over the next 10 years? Why are we considering that when we know that a tax cut of that magnitude is going to stimulate the economy? And why do we want to stimulate an economy that is perking along so well that Alan Greenspan keeps Wall Street on edge every day saying, ``If this economy gets any hotter, I'm going to raise interest rates''? That is the constant threat every time the Federal Reserve Board meets, the threat of higher interest rates. You cut capital gains taxes, and I promise you it will not be long until you will have an interest rate increase from the Fed. You cut these other taxes to the tune of $200 billion over the next 5 years, and I promise you interest rates will go up. Alan Greenspan will see to it. And if interest rates go up, the market will drop and economic activity will drop. So why would we insist on making a crazy economic decision to stimulate an economy which is moving along sharply? I see statements in the press every morning of some politician saying, ``Well, people know how to handle their money a lot better than Washington. It's a lot better to leave it in their pocket than send it to Washington.'' I understand that, and I understand that if you are looking for applause, that statement is a good way to get it. But I also understand that we have a golden opportunity that does not present itself often, and that is to honestly balance the budget and give the people of this Nation a night's sleep like they have never had before. The Senator from New Mexico offered two budgets this afternoon. One was the President's. I said many times on this floor, I am not enamored with the President's budget. I am not enamored with any budget which does not reduce the deficit this year and next. The Senator from New Mexico is getting very close to singing my song. You like bipartisanship? You like for Republicans and Democrats to agree? The Senator from New Mexico probably is not trying to curry my favor, but he is getting awfully close to doing it with his resolution which says no tax cuts until we get to a balanced budget using CBO's figures. Mr. President, the Budget Committee has been deliberating, and I think they have been making some progress, incidentally. They even think they have the deficit down to $111 billion now, and if they are that close, I think it is absolutely imperative that we improve over the 1996 deficit by cutting it below $107 billion this year and below that next year. One of the things about the proposal of the Senator from New Mexico is that when we reach that happy day--when we are in balance--then half of any surplus will go to reduce the cuts made in nondefense discretionary spending. That is education, law enforcement, environment, health care, medical research. It is all the things that make us a great nation. But the Senator from New Mexico very carefully has focused on making cuts in nondefense discretionary spending. Well, what is wrong with asking the Defense Department to help out? Why in the name of all that is good and holy would we, in 1996, insist that the Defense Department take $9 billion more than they even asked for? I sit on the Defense Appropriations Committee, and I am telling you, I get absolutely nauseated at times. You take the F-22 fighter plane, which we do not need, I promise you--and I am going to stand at this desk and maybe lose another battle on the F-22--but when you start talking to me about building 438 airplanes at $180 million each to compete with a Russian airplane that is not even on the drawing board, let alone being off the drawing board, and at a time when we are building 1,000 advance F-18's which will be as good, or better, than any plane that could possibly challenge us for the next 20 years, and then follow that in 2015 with a joint strike fighter--no, they want to fill in what they say is a gap with a plane, Mr. President, that costs $180 million a copy, 438 of them. Would you like to know how much the estimated cost of the F-22 has gone up in the past year compared to what we were told in 1996? $15 billion. $15 billion in 1 year. God knows what it will be by the year 2006 or 2007 when we start building these airplanes. We will not be able to afford them, I can tell you that. I am simply saying that we should look at what we are going to cut. The Senator from New Mexico has a $100 billion cut in Medicare. And what about Medicaid? I do not know whether we are cutting Medicaid $9 billion or $22 billion. You hear conflicting numbers on that, but bear in mind what these programs are. Medicare is health care for our elderly; Medicaid is health care for the poor, the most vulnerable of all our children. Last year, we cut welfare recipients' food stamps, everything, for the poorest people in the country, $55 billion. Mr. President, I am not going to go home and tell my constituents that I voted to savage the most vulnerable people in our population, the children and the elderly and the poor, and that I voted to give the money to the wealthiest 5 percent of the people in America. And I promise you, if I were running against somebody that had done that, I could make that case in spades and be absolutely certain of my ground. I did not vote for the welfare bill last year. I was one of the 21 people that did not. You can call me a bleeding heart liberal. You can call my anything you want to. But when this body starts saying the only way we can balance the budget is by giving the Pentagon billions they did not even ask for and cutting Medicare by $100 billion, and depriving the poorest children in the country of Medicaid to the tune of $22 billion, and making $55 billion in welfare cuts--you see, I would have to say I never went to Methodist Sunday school as a boy, but I did. I believed those Methodist Sunday school stories about my obligation to my fellow man. You hurt your fellow man, you insult God. So I am not going to do it, whether you want to talk about religion or whether you want to talk about common sense, whether you want to talk about what has made this country great. One thing that has made this country great is our commitment to the elderly. We reduced the poverty rate among them from 25 percent to 12 percent since 1950. We ought to keep doing it. We ought to come to our senses. I intend to sit down and visit with the Senator from New Mexico and talk seriously with him about this. I am not negotiating on behalf of the President or anybody else. But I want to applaud the Senator from New Mexico this afternoon because he has made a very important statement that a lot of people on that side will disagree with. But I think he is on the right track. I think Newt Gingrich made a very important statement earlier this week, and I applaud him for it. Mr. President, I appreciate having the opportunity to make these statements. I have been intending to do this all week and had such a schedule I could not do it. But I am feeling better tonight about the direction we are headed than I have in some time. I yield the floor. Mr. LOTT addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. My pleasure, Mr. President.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, let me say before I begin my remarks on a separate subject, that the majority leader is absolutely right when he talks about the necessity for developing a system of disposing of high- level nuclear waste in this country from our nuclear powerplants. I, when I was Governor of Arkansas 22 years ago, wondered how on Earth we were going to deal with that. That was the reason I was always opposed to building more nuclear plants when we had not figured out how we were going to decommission the ones that we had and dispose of the nuclear waste that was coming out of them. So it is one of the most difficult, knotty problems I have ever faced. I am ranking on the Energy Committee and we have wrestled with this at length over the years. This is no time to debate it, except to say it is one of the most awesome, difficult problems I have ever been confronted with.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Senator. No. 1, Mr. President, as much respect as I have for a number of Members of the Senate--and we have some very bright people in the Senate--there isn't anybody here, really, that I want tinkering with what James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and all of the rest of those brilliant people, the most important assemblage of brilliant minds under one roof in the history of the world, did. Not only do I not want anybody tinkering with it, I do not want to adopt something as sloppily crafted as this amendment is. As Senator Byrd has said time and time again, it is not even constitution-like language. It doesn't provide for a simple majority vote to unbalance the budget in case of depression. It doesn't provide for a simple majority vote in case we know we are going to war, as we did in Desert Storm. You would not have spent an extra dollar, under this amendment, to prepare for Desert Storm. You could not spend an extra dollar to have prepared for World War II, which everybody knew was coming, if it unbalanced the budget. You talk about a minority, listen to this, Mr. President. With 435 House Members, 100 Senators, if we want to unbalance the budget, it is going to require 60 percent of both Houses. Let's assume that every single House Member, all 435, vote aye to unbalance the budget, bring it over to the Senate, and let us assume that 59 Senators vote aye to unbalance the budget, 41 obstreperous Senators--494 people favoring unbalancing the budget and 41 Senators oppose it. It will not be unbalanced. What else? If we can't resolve the thousands of questions that this amendment leaves to be answered, then nobody has an answer and you go to court. Yes, coffee shop bantering is, ``I'm so tired of the courts making laws. I just want them to interpret the laws.'' Well, they are going to have to make a lot of laws if we are foolish enough to adopt this one. In 1993, the Republicans in this body had an opportunity to do something courageous. The people back home always say, ``Why don't you people screw up your nerve and do something courageous?'' You know what that means? It sometimes means unpopular votes. ``Why don't you screw up your courage and vote for something that is worthwhile, even though it is unpopular?'' Well, happily, 50 Democrats did just that. Al Gore, the Vice President, broke the tie and the debt went down because of their courage. Everybody on that side prospered because they said, ``I'm tired of taxes.'' Do you know what they are proposing now? With a sanctimonious look on their faces, they are saying, ``We want a balanced budget amendment.'' What else? We want to cut taxes $238 billion over the next 5 years. We tried that snake oil in 1981, and we got a $3 trillion addition to the national debt. What is the deficit going to be if we adopt a capital gains tax, which costs $33 billion the first 5 years, $133 billion the second 5 years--and who does it go to? The wealthiest people in America; 67 percent of it goes to the richest 1 percent of the people in America. How are we going to pay for it? Cut Medicare. Think of it. Cutting Medicare $100 billion to $200 billion in order to pass a tax, 67 percent of which goes to the richest 1 percent of the people in America. I will say one thing for the people on that side of the aisle. They are not covert about it; they are overt. Make no mistake about it, I have just told you precisely how it will work. So, Mr. President, I am hoping that everybody holds fast. If we can beat this amendment today, which I think we can do, the American people are going to begin to hone in on it, and by this time next year, you won't even have it brought up. It will be just like term limits. It is going to go the same way term limits went. That never was a good idea, and it is dead now. So, Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will stand fast. I understand the politics of this. The majority leader was willing to tinker with this amendment. ``I will fix it. Will anybody vote for it if I change this?'' ``Will somebody else vote for it if we change that?'' That is how political it is. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I will be very brief. A lot of people want to catch airplanes, and I do not want to discommode anybody. But let me close by saying the Senator from Utah has suggested that the constitutional amendment would be so much more effective than my amendment. But I ask the Senator from Utah, what provision in the constitutional amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 1, is more effective than mine? We cannot ignore the Budget Act; 60 votes is 60 votes, whether you are trying to get 60 votes to comply with the constitutional amendment or whether you are trying to get 60 votes to comply with the Budget Act, as my amendment will provide. Let me tell you what one of the differences is. Under my amendment, if you cannot get 60 votes, you shut the Government down and you wait for the people here to come to their senses and get the Government open, as we did the year before last. Under the constitutional amendment, if you cannot get the 60 votes, you shut the Government down and go down to the Supreme Court and wait for them to act. Not only is that time-consuming and outrageous, but you are also cutting the three branches of the Government of the United States to two. One of the reasons we have this big deficit, which everybody laments--let me say it once more--is because we talk one way and act another. We talk about how we are going to get the budget balanced, and how terrible it is that we cannot get our spending under control, and then we turn around and cut taxes by massive amounts. It is the worst form of snake oil I have ever seen in my life, yet we keep buying into it. We bought into it in 1981, and now we are getting ready to buy into it again. All I am saying is, under my amendment, you have everything you have under the constitutional amendment. It is just as tough to comply with--really, tougher--and we exclude Social Security. I guess everything is said that needs to be said, so I will close and let the Senator from Utah move to table my amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield the floor and retain the remainder of my time. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1789. It will be 208 years old this coming summer. In that period of time, there have been more than 11,000 efforts to amend the Constitution. And to the eternal credit of this body and the American people, only 18 times out of the 11,000 efforts have we amended the Constitution. Of those 11,000 efforts, I consider the amendment pending before this body to be the most unworkable, unenforceable, totally political amendment ever to be foisted off on an unsuspecting public. I have never heard as many questions answered with ``I don't know.'' Who will enforce this amendment? ``I don't know.'' What will be the courts' role, if any, in enforcing this amendment? ``I don't know.'' And I am speaking for the authors of this amendment when I say, ``I don't know,'' because they don't know. Who has standing to sue? ``I don't know.'' Who has standing to challenge the assumptions that we make that we have a balanced budget? ``I don't know.'' It reminds me of Abbott and Costello and ``Who's on First?'' And if we have a crisis--a crisis that is not yet a military conflict, but may become one, such as previous to World War II, such as previous to Desert Storm, the constitutional amendment says you have to have 60 votes to unbalance the budget, even though you are headed, almost certainly, toward war with another nation. There are no provisions in here to take care of a national emergency that is not yet a military conflict or a declared war. It has been said time and time again, but it bears repeating, that we have had 5 declared wars in the history of this country and about 200 military conflicts. Can the courts raise taxes? ``I don't know.'' Can the courts demand a cut in spending? ``I don't know.'' If a court orders Congress to raise taxes or cut spending and we don't do it and can't get the 60 votes to do it, what happens then? ``I don't know.'' Can the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court go to the White House and say to the President, ``Mr. President, you are charged with executing and enforcing the laws of this Nation. We have ordered Congress to do a number of things in order to come into compliance with this constitutional amendment to balance the budget, and they have refused to do it. Now, do your duty, Mr. President, send the troops over that Hill and hold bayonets to the backs of the Members until they do it.'' Now, that is farfetched, of course. But how many times have I heard the lamentation on this floor about the courts being intrusive and intervening where they have no right to intervene? Yet, Mr. President, this is a popular amendment. It is popular in my State and across the country. But it is not as popular as it was 2 years ago. It has gone from about 74 percent to 57 percent approval. If you ask about Social Security it only has a 27 percent approval rating. I don't like casting unpopular votes. I have cast my share of them. I think one of the reasons the polls have consistently showed this to be popular is twofold. First, when you ask people whether you favor a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, all they hear is ``balance the budget,'' and everybody is for that. Perhaps, there is another group who, like most of us, revere the majesty of the words in the Constitution and they think because of our reverence for the Constitution throughout history, if you just put it in the Constitution, it will be self-fulfilling. It would never occur to them how sloppily crafted this constitutional amendment is. It would never occur to them that it isn't even constitutional language. It would never occur to them that nobody can tell you how it's going to work. This amendment makes a mockery of that great, revered document. Now, some people who find this to be very popular and highly desirable may take umbrage at some of the things I say. But I have voted against it every time I ever had a chance. But do you know something else? I think one of the things that has stood me in pretty good stead with the people of Arkansas is that I have always trusted them. When I voted for the Panama Canal treaties--and I can tell you, nothing even comes close to that as far as unpopular votes are concerned--I survived it, and it was a correct vote. Very few people in this body would reverse that vote. Put your trust in the people, vote against this constitutional amendment, and don't have any fear of going home and talking sense to your people. They understand it. Not one person on that side of the aisle is going to vote against this nonsense--not one. How I miss the towering courage of Mark Hatfield in this body. Let me tell you what the Bumpers-Feingold amendment does, Mr. President. It is simple, ingenious in its simplicity, and it does the same thing the constitutional amendment would do but it takes Social Security off budget. We commit the constitutional amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 1, to the Budget Committee, with instructions to come back here with amendments to the Budget Act almost identical to this amendment. Did you know, Mr. President, that you can't raise taxes and you can't raise spending, and you can't appropriate money until the budget resolution has passed this body? If you want to change the Budget Act, if you amend the Budget Act, do you know what you have to do? You have to get 60 votes. We passed that with 51 votes. Strangely enough, you can pass something with 51 votes that later requires 61 votes to undo. What does our amendment do? As I say, it refers Senate Joint Resolution 1 to the Budget Committee and instructs them to amend the Budget Act with language almost identical to the constitutional amendment requiring that outlays shall not exceed receipts by 2002. The constitutional amendment says you may or may not enforce the amendment. I just got through covering that. The Bumpers/Feingold amendment would prohibit Congress from passing a budget resolution if it isn't balanced. As I just said, there is a prohibition on the passage of appropriations bills and tax bills without 60 votes. The constitutional amendment says there is no requirement for action until 2002 at the earliest. Do you know what that means? The drafters of this amendment put a provision in there saying 2002. So we have 5 free years. We don't have to do anything for 5 years. Those are freebies. Most people here will have left or will have been reelected in 5 years. Our amendment says you have to do it now. Face the music now, not 5 years from now. Come up with a budget that puts us on a glidepath to a balanced budget by the year 2002. If the States have not ratified this constitutional amendment by the year 2002, you have maybe 2 more free years where you don't have to do anything. Our amendment says start now and balance the budget by the year 2002. Do you know what else it does? It leaves our precious Constitution intact. The best part of this is that it does not trivialize the Constitution. The mandate for a balanced budget is just as tough under this amendment as it is in the constitutional amendment. Mr. President, in 1993 every single Republican voted against a proposal to reduce the deficit dramatically. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation bill of 1993 required the Vice President's vote because the vote was tied 50-50. And among the 50 who opposed it, every Republican and about 6 Democrats. At the time we voted the deficit for 1996 was projected to be $290 billion. As a result of that bill, and the economic growth that came from the confidence that gave, the people of this country knew that we were serious about deficit reduction, instead of a $290 billion deficit it was $107 billion. Mr. President, what is going on now? The President submitted a budget to us which I am not very fond of. I do not like to say that. He is a good friend and has been for 20 years. But I would not have come with a single tax cut, not one. And I would have submitted a budget that took the deficit from $107 billion in 1996 to well under $100 billion in 1997 to show the American people that we were on a glidepath to a balanced budget and we were not going to back off. The President's tax cuts are not nearly, though, as big as the Republicans. The Republican tax proposal will cost $193 billion. Think of that, $193 billion over the next 5 years. And $508 billion over the next 10 years. Do you know where they get $100 billion to offset that? Medicare. Do you think that I am going to go home and tell the people in my State that I voted to cut Medicare $100 billion so we could have a $193 billion tax cut the next 5 years? I would need a saliva test to do that. I am not going to do it, and I am not going to vote for these tax cuts. It is the height of irresponsibility to come in here and talk about cutting taxes $193 billion taking $100 billion out of the hides of people on Medicare. They say, ``Oh. We are not going to raise the Medicare premiums.'' No. But if you think you can cut Medicare $100 billion and not cut services to the elderly, go talk to the HMO's and tell them how they are going to make up for the $100 billion we are going to cut. They are going to cut services. That is how they are going to do it, while we have a capital gains tax that cost $33 billion over the next 5 years and $130 billion over the next 10 years. Where does it go?--67 percent of it to the richest 1 percent of the people in this country. ``Oh, yes. We are going to cut taxes and balance the budget.'' Mr. President, it is so cynical to get a serious, somber look on one's face and talk about deficits and propose cutting taxes by such massive amounts. We tried that in 1981. Mr. President, I don't know how many books there are on that stack down there. I have been looking at that for the last week ever since we started debating this constitutional amendment. Do you know what I would recommend? I wish the distinguished floor manager would take that stack of books and weigh them, put them on a scale and weigh them. And then take the national debt of $5.2 trillion, and divide those books up according to how much deficit by poundage came under Ronald Reagan and George Bush administrations. That would make an interesting thing for the film companies to film. I promise you that when you take Ronald Reagan's and George Bush's deficit over the 12-year period that they served this country and you are going to get about 1 foot for all the Democrats and about 6 feet just for that 12-year period. Do you know why? Because we had the massive tax cut in 1981. And I say once again. I was one of the 11 Senators that said, ``You pass that and you are going to create deficits big enough to choke a mule.'' Eleven out of 100 stood up and called that 1981 bill what it was, the most irresponsible thing we have ever done in the history of the U.S. Senate. You talk about mortgaging the future of our children. That is when we went from $1 trillion in debt that we had accumulated over 200 years to $4 trillion in 12 years; a little over $4 trillion. Think of it. Talk about irresponsibility. So I have spent an inordinate amount of my time since I have been in the Senate trying to do sensible things to balance the budget. I keep getting run over by a Mack truck called ``tax cuts'' and ``spending increases,'' particularly in defense. You just do not get a somber look on your face while you are voting for the biggest spending increases of the year called tax cuts. Just yesterday the Center for Budget Priorities came out and strongly recommended that the U.S. Congress forget tax cuts until we balance the budget. There is all the time in the world to cut taxes. Republicans say, ``Well, that is a liberal organization.'' Warren Rudman, with whom we all served 12 years in the U.S. Senate, is no liberal. He heads up the Concord Coalition, and the Concord Coalition jumped on that study yesterday like a chicken after a June bug, and said, ``We agree with every word of it.'' All you have to have is a little common sense to agree with it. You have to understand. You can't cut taxes and balance the budget. I have only voted for one constitutional amendment during my tenure in the Senate. And sometimes that is unpopular back home. But do you know something else? I talk about trusting the people. Do you know what the people want more than anything else today? Like Coca-Cola says, they want ``The real thing.'' They want to know how you really feel. Stand up for what you believe. Harry Truman told me one time, ``Just tell them the truth.'' So that is what I did. There is not even anything in the constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to raise spending with less than 60 votes for a depression. I am a Depression child, one of the few left in the Senate. I am telling you we did not have anything. We did not have paved streets; we did not have gas; we did not have electricity; we did not have health care. As I said, we had a two-holer out back when most people just had a one-holer. We did not have anything. As I have said before in this Chamber, I had pneumonia twice before I was 6 years old and all my parents could do was pray. Today that hardly requires much more than a visit to the doctor's office. And people tell me how they hate Government. They do not hate antibiotics. They do not hate measles and mumps serums and vaccines. They do not hate the fact that we live a lot longer than we used to because we pour a lot of money into NIH to do medical research for us. They do not hate being able to go on an airplane anyplace in the United States in 4 hours. They do not mind driving down a highway with six lanes on it going 60 to 80 miles an hour. They do not hate REA that gave electricity to rural America. They do not hate the Department of Agriculture for water and sewer systems for rural people. And I could stand here for another hour listing things Government has done, and not a person in this body would vote to undo a single one, although they were highly controversial at the time. Don't you remember how doctors hated Medicare? I can remember how Social Security was a socialist program and TVA was a Communist-inspired program. Under the constitutional amendment if we face another depression--it is certainly not out of the realm of reason--you have to get 60 votes here to start putting people back to work like Franklin Roosevelt did. All of the rich people in the country said Franklin Roosevelt was the worst thing that ever happened in this country because he was borrowing money to help people. Do you know what he said? ``It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.'' Hurricane Hugo, where we spent $5 billion in South Carolina alone; the earthquake in California, for which the cost is incalculable and will continue to be, it would take 60 votes--41 obstreperous, really fundamentally conservative people could say, no, we are not going to unbalance the budget because there are a bunch of people living and dying who should not have been living over a fault anyway. Mr. President, this amendment has the potential for creating more mischief, more chaos in this country than anything we have ever considered. And even though it looks as though my side has the necessary 34 votes to keep this thing from going into our precious Constitution, I want to keep talking about it until the American people understand what is at stake.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I now ask unanimous consent that the amendment be laid aside subject to further consideration.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Feingold and myself, we move to refer Senate Joint Resolution 1 to the Budget Committee with instructions to report back forthwith with an amendment. That is essentially the amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I would like to address a question to the distinguished Senator from New Jersey. Would he be willing to yield me 30 seconds in order for me to offer an amendment?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to proceed for 15 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce three bills which are intended to reform hardrock mining on public land and recover, for taxpayers, lost revenues resulting from the patenting process under the 1872 mining law. The 1872 mining law was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant during a time when our national policy was to encourage the settlement of the West with the enticement of free land and minerals. However, 124 years have now passed and the mining law has become a relic. Rather than serve the interests of the public, the mining law gives away billions of dollars worth of land and minerals to mining companies for practically nothing. While there are many flaws with the 1872 law, some of the most outrageous include: allowing the sale of public lands and minerals for $2.50 to $5.00 per acre; allowing the mining of valuable minerals without a dime in royalty payments to the taxpayers for those minerals; allowing patented land bought for $2.50 an acre to be resold at market prices--sometimes thousands of dollars per acre; and not adequately protecting the environment. Our attitudes toward public resources have changed since the 19th century and so have most of our public policies. While the mining law has been amended indirectly over the years, its basic provisions remain unchanged and are in dire need of reform. Over the years numerous private, government and congressional studies have recommended either revising the mining law or repealing it completely. One of the most thorough modern studies of the mining law was conducted by the Public Land Law Review Commission during the 1960's. The commission's work formed the basis for the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 [FLPMA]. In ``One Third of the Nation's Land--A Report to Congress and the President'' the commission stated: The general mining law of 1872 has been abused, but even without that abuse, it has many deficiencies. Individuals whose primary interest is not in mineral development and production have attempted, under the guise of that law, to obtain use of public lands for various other purposes. The 1872 law offers no means by which the Government can effectively control environmental impacts. While the Public Land Review Commission and many others have called for comprehensive mining law reform for some time now, Congress has failed to respond. At a time when the public is clamoring for a more efficient government and a government that treats the taxpayers with dignity and respect, the 1872 mining law instead condones the giveaway of public lands and valuable minerals worth billions of dollars for practically nothing and which permits long-term environmental degradation of our public lands. In the last four Congresses I introduced legislation which would have comprehensively reformed the mining law. On each occasion the mining industry went to great lengths to successfully ensure that the 1872 mining law would not be comprehensively reformed. However, Mr. President, as we continue to strive to balance the Federal budget, the day of reckoning for beneficiaries of corporate welfare is getting closer. Eventually, Congress is going to enact real mining law reform. The legislation I am introducing today is an effort to seek to protect the interests of the very people that Members of Congress purport to represent--the American people. One hundred twenty-four years after Ulysses Grant signed the mining law the time has come to bring our Nation's mineral policy into the present. As always, I am willing to work with people on all sides of this issue in an attempt to develop a solution amenable to all. However, I will not be a party to the efforts of those who, in an effort to end debate on the subject, attempt to enact ``sham reform'' legislation drafted by the mining industry. The problems of the mining law and the proposed solutions contained in the three bills I am introducing today are described more fully below. Under the existing mining law, a patent-fee simple title--to a mining claim on Federal lands may be obtained for the purchase price of $2.50 an acre for a placer claim--or $5 an acre for a lode claim--a price which has not changed since 1872. During the last 124 years, the Government has sold more than 3.2 million acres of land under the patent provision of the 1872 mining law, an area similar to the size of the State of Connecticut. This is a giveaway--pure and simple--and is directly contrary to the national policy enunciated in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act--that, in most cases, public lands should be retained in public ownership. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that $5 an acre is far less than the fair market value of the patented land and the minerals thereon. In 1994 we witnessed one of the biggest taxpayer ripoffs in the history of the mining law when the Federal Government was forced to grant patents to a subsidiary of a Canadian-owned mining company. In exchange for 1,800 acres of land in Nevada containing more than $10 billion in gold, the Federal Government received the princely sum of less than $10,000. Mr. President, believe it or not, the taxpayers stand to do worse in the very near future. The Stillwater Mining Co., which is jointly owned by Chevron and Manville, has applied for patents on approximately 2,000 acres of Forest Service land in Montana. In exchange for $10,000, the company will receive fee title to land containing, according to Stillwater's own reserve estimates, $35 billion worth of platinum and palladium. Congress finally took action in 1994 by imposing a 1-year moratorium on the processing of new patent applications and those applications that were still in the early stages of processing. This moratorium has been renewed the last 2 years, albeit after an effort was made by Senators from the West to repeal it. Under the Hardrock Mining Royalty Act of 1997, which I am introducing today, mining claim holders would no longer be able to patent their claims. The sale of Federal lands for $2.50 or $5.00 an acre would be permanently halted. In addition to allowing the sale of lands for far less than fair market value, the mining law also permits corporations to mine valuable minerals from public domain lands without paying a nickel in royalties to the landowner--the taxpayers. While oil, gas, and coal producers all pay royalties to the U.S. Treasury for production on Federal lands, the Government doesn't receive anything for hardrock minerals produced on Federal lands subject to the 1872 mining law. The hardrock mining companies contend that they would be forced to shut down operations if they were required to pay royalties to the Federal Government. However, these same companies find themselves able to pay royalties for mining operations on State and private lands. In fact, the Newmont Mining Co. pays an 18 percent royalty on land acquired from private interests on a portion of its gold quarry mine in Nevada's Carlin Trend. Ironically, a hardrock miner operating on acquired Federal lands pays a royalty to the Federal Government while his counterpart on lands subject to the mining law pays nothing. There is no justifiable reason for this difference. Billions of dollars' worth of hardrock minerals are extracted from the public lands. It is absolutely unfair to the taxpayers of this country to permit hardrock mining companies to enjoy the same tax breaks as others, while failing to adequately compensate the public landowners. The legislation I am introducing today seeks to remedy this result. First, the Hardrock Mining Royalty Act of 1997 would require the payment of a royalty of 5 percent of the net smelter return from mineral production on public lands. Because the royalty would not apply to minerals extracted on lands already patented under the mining law, the Abandoned Mines Reclamation Act of 1997 would required mining companies operating on patented land to pay a net-income-based reclamation fee. Finally, because it makes absolutely no sense to permit mining companies to take advantage of a mineral depletion allowance when they are using taxpayer land without compensating the taxpayers, the elimination of double subsidies for the Hardrock Mining Industry Act of 1997 would repeal the depletion allowance for mining operations on land subject to the 1872 mining law. Originally, the mining law required claimants to certify that they performed 100 dollars' worth of work on their mining claims each year in order to maintain their claims. Because many claimants were not serious about mining their claims, Congress replaced the work requirement with a $100 per claim maintenance fee. In conjunction with the administration's proposal the Hardrock Mining Royalty Act increases the fee for new claims to $125. Mr. President, past mining activities have left a legacy of unreclaimed lands, acid mine drainage, and hazardous waste. More than 50 abandoned hardrock mining sites are currently on the Superfund national priority list. Some estimate that it could cost taxpayers upward of $70 billion to clean all the abandoned mining sites. The legislation I am introducing today would create an abandoned mine reclamation fund to help reclaim the many hardrock mining sites which have been abandoned. Money for the fund would come from the royalties and holding fees collected under the Hardrock Mining Royalty Act of 1997 and the reclamation fees collected under the Abandoned Hardrock Mining Reclamation Act of 1997. Mr. President, the mining industry knows that the public is slowly learning about the 1872 mining law and the associated atrocities and believe me, the industry is worried. As they have done in the past, I suspect the mining industry will once again raise a smokescreen by proposing so-called reforms. For instance, the mining industry has proposed that instead of paying $2.50 or $5.00 an acre for patents, that instead they pay the fair market value of the surface, regardless of the value of the minerals located on the land. While the concept of fair market value is certainly a good one, it is absurd to argue that the Stillwater Mining Co. would really be paying fair market value if they paid for the surface--probably worth less than $100 an acre--and ignored the value of the platinum and palladium--estimated to be $35 billion. Mr. President, if you or I ran a company which sold land for such fair market value, we would be fired in a New York minute. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to beware of such sham reform. Mr. President and colleagues, I urge you to support the long overdue reform of the 1872 mining law and to cosponsor my three bills. Both Republicans and Democrats are always talking about change and the need to end business as usual in Washington. My legislation is intended to end business as usual and bring the 1872 mining law into the 20th century. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bills be printed in the Record.

Mr. BUMPERS

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