Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Just for 5 minutes if the Senator from Iowa will yield to me.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I have listened very carefully to the Senator from Iowa's speech, as I have listened virtually to every member of the Republican Party of the Senate who has consistently lamented the deficit-reduction package of 1993. I did not enjoy voting to raise taxes in 1993 any more than I enjoyed cutting spending in 1993. But to set the record straight, that deficit-reduction package was intended to reduce the deficit compared to what it would otherwise be, by $500 billion over a period of 5 years. It was a very dramatic time in the Senate. Fifty Democrats voted aye. Every single Republican voted no. And Vice President Gore, who was seated in the chair that day, voted aye and broke the tie. And so the $500 billion deficit-reduction package became law. At least two Senators on this side of the aisle lost their reelection campaigns because they voted aye, a very courageous and responsible vote. The Office of Management and Budget estimates that rather than produce $500 billion in savings, but because interest rates came down as a result of that package and because economic activity went up, the 1993 Clinton budget bill will actually reduce the deficit by $800 billion over the same 5-year period, 1993 to 1998. So I ask my Republican colleagues who find that deficit-reduction bill passed by 50 very courageous Democrats in 1993, I ask them to tell all Americans as we start to work on the budget tomorrow, where you would get that $800 billion if we had not acted so responsibly? The budget we will debate tomorrow, which I have absolutely no intention of voting for, again, has substantial cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, and--listen to this--a $60 billion cut in education over the next 6 years. Who gets the money? Why, the Republican budget provides for an $11.3 billion increase next year alone in defense spending. Now, Mr. President, for the edification of anybody who cares, out of a roughly $1.7 trillion budget, less than one-third of that is for what we call domestic discretionary spending--education; the environment; medical research; medical care and a whole host of other things. Mr. President, $515 billion is provided for discretionary spending, but defense gets the bulk of that, including a nice, handsome $11-plus billion increase, and everything else that makes us a great country worth defending goes down. The environment, including funding for EPA's enforcement, takes a whopping hit. In 1970, 65 percent of the lakes and streams in this country were neither swimmable nor fishable. In 1995, 65 percent of the lakes and streams in this Nation are swimmable and are fishable because EPA, through their enforcement acts, made people quit dumping their sewage into the rivers and streams and made the soap manufacturers come up with cleaner soaps without chemicals in them. How does the Republican budget respond to that kind of progress? Why, they cut EPA's enforcement because they argue the business community just cannot take it. I am the first to admit that some regulations are crazy and do not make sense. But nobody, Republican or Democrat alike, in their heart of hearts wants to turn the clock back on cleaning up the lakes and streams of this Nation, or polluting the air we breathe, which is much, much cleaner now, principally because we made the automobile industry put catalytic converters in their cars. So when the Republicans talk about that big tax hike in 1993, what is their answer? Maybe in their heart of hearts they are feeling a little badly about having voted against cutting the deficit by an honest-to- God $800 billion--not over 7 years; over a 5-year period. What is their answer to it? Cut the gasoline tax 4.3 cents. I thought my good colleague from Louisiana, Senator Breaux, had a great line. That is like spitting in the ocean and trying to make it rise. The gas tax did not cause the gasoline price increase and it is not going to contribute to reducing it. It will go into the pockets of the oil companies. Everybody says that by October, gas prices will be back where they started from and we will be sitting here with $3 billion added to the deficit. What is it with the Republicans? They will not vote for deficit reduction, they keep on increasing defense spending, they keep wanting to repeal the gas tax. And their budget has an enormous billion tax cut. I am not voting for any tax cuts until we get the deficit under control. You know what is really paradoxical about the proposed tax cut that gives families a credit for each child? Listen to this: Six to nine million people in this country work for anywhere from $4.25 an hour to $6 and $7 an hour, 6 to 9 million of them. We give them a little check at the end of the year called the earned income tax credit because we believe that is preferable to their quitting work and going on welfare. So we say we will give you up to $2,800 at the end of the year if you will just stay on the job. That is a lot cheaper than $9,000 a year on welfare. It is a good investment for us. What does the Republican budget do? It cuts investment tax credit by approximately $20 billion. What does this mean to the 6 to 9 million people who are working for essentially minimum wages, up to $7 an hour? Effectively, they get a tax increase because the earned income tax credit has been cut. Do you know what else is really ironic about it? Those people do not pay taxes. They do not make enough to pay taxes. So you know what? They do not get a child tax credit. They are getting a tax increase by cutting the earned-income tax credit, and they get nothing to offset it because it is only if you pay taxes that you can offset the tax cut for each child. What kind of lunacy is this? What do the American people expect from us? They expect a little decency and they expect fairness.

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me say to the Senator from California, this question reminds me of something Franklin Roosevelt said. My father taught us when we died we were going to Franklin Roosevelt's. He was the only one who ever did anything for us. This budget is a manifestation of almost total disdain for people trying to reach for the first rung on the ladder. It is protectionism at its worst of those who have much. Franklin Roosevelt once said, and I know the Senator is familiar with the quote, ``The groans of the full pocketbooks of the wealthy are louder than the churning of the empty stomachs of hungry people.'' That is not so true now as it was during the Depression, but the principle in this budget is the same. You think about cutting education $60 billion. You think of how many children will not be educated as a result of that. I have said time and time again if it had not been for the GI bill waiting for me when I got out of the service, I would not be standing here right now. And that applies to millions and millions of people. There was a very poignant story in the Post this morning about a woman who said, ``I wouldn't be in this position if it hadn't been for student loans and student grants.'' So what are we doing? We are cutting education $60 billion. Everybody wants clear air and clean water. So what are we doing? Cutting the environment. Nobody wants to see a child go without health care. So we are cutting Medicaid. I could go on and on. But I find this budget almost identical to the budget we debated last year-- --

Mr. BUMPERS. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 4 additional minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. The one followed by a reconciliation which the President had the good sense and the courage to veto. Had he not vetoed it, we would be on our way to third-world status right now. That is how bad I felt it was. Mr. President, I know my time has about expired. Every time I think of the fact that two of my very best friends and best Senators in the U.S. Senate lost their seats because they cast a very courageous vote here in 1993, it makes me sad. So, Mr. President, there are going to be a limited number of amendments. I have a number that I wish I could offer on the budget, but I know time constraints will not permit that. However, I will offer a few. One amendment would keep the U.S. Government from selling assets to balance the budget. Think about selling the power marketing systems. Think about selling the Elk Hills Petroleum Reserve. Sell everything. What do you do for an encore when everything is gone? A woman once said her husband came home from the law office and said, ``I had a great day today.'' She said, ``What happened?'' He said, ``I sold my desk.'' That is what we are doing in this budget. I am not going to vote for it. I am going to vigorously speak against it, and there will be 53 Republicans that will vote for it. We are starting down the same road we just left. I yield the floor. Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill dealing with a proposed gold, silver, and copper mine to be operated by the Crown Butte Mining Co., a wholly-owned subsidiary of two Canadian companies, 2\1/2\ miles north of Yellowstone National Park. They also propose to construct a 72-acre impoundment area with a dam that would be somewhere between 75 and 100 feet high, which would have a plastic lining on the bottom and some sort of a cap on top to keep oxygen away from the 5.5 million tons of tailings from the mining operation that would go into this impoundment area. The purpose of keeping the oxygen away from it is to keep the waste from turning into sulfuric acid. The President of the United States flew over this area last summer and promptly thereafter, by Executive order, withdrew 19,100 acres of land in the Gallatin and Custer National Forests in Montana. The President has the authority to segregate public lands, subject to valid existing rights, and keep that land from being used for mining purposes for a period of 2 years. Then the Secretary of the Interior has the right, pursuant to the Federal Lands Policy Management Act, to withdraw that land for 20 years. My bill would prevent approximately 24,000 acres of Federal land in the area from being used for mining, subject to valid existing rights. My bill admittedly cannot legally stop Crown Butte from proceeding with the mine, assuming the proposed mine meets all of the environmental requirements. My bill and the President's action before my bill are designed to discourage them and dissuade them from doing it. I hope that Crown Butte, as good corporate citizens, will not force the issue and leave us to wonder whether or not this 5.5 million tons of tailings that they propose to impound there could possibly break loose and pollute Clarks Fork and Soda Butte Creek, which flows right into Yellowstone National Park. The American Rivers Association has listed, for the last 3 years, the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River as the most threatened river in America. The World Heritage Convention, which consists of more than 135 nations that collaborate on what they consider to be sites of international significance, has declared Yellowstone National Park as endangered because of the proposed mine. All of that does not have to tell us anything. I went to Yellowstone when I was 12 years old--breathtaking. I never forgot any part of it, the geysers, the magnificent waterfalls--all of it. Here is the first national park in America, Yellowstone, a crown jewel. To allow a mining company, in the interest of extracting $500 million to $700 million worth of gold, silver and copper, to threaten to destroy the first national park in America, one of the real crown jewels of the world, not just America, is absolutely unacceptable. From a purely philosophical standpoint, I am an unrepentant environmentalist. I have not always been, because I never fully understood it until I came to the Senate. But I have come to the conclusion that if something is going to cause a lot of economic dislocation, cost a lot of jobs, and the environmental damage is temporary and can be fully, 100 percent mitigated, there are instances when that might be acceptable. But any time you cannot conclusively show that the environmental damage you are about to do cannot be mitigated, cannot be reversed, that is a no brainer to this Senator. While Crown Butte says that their impoundment area is a state-of-the- art method of impounding these horrible, environmentally devastating tailings from that gold operation, that is a no brainer for us not to do everything we can to stop it. The American people share many heartfelt values. None is greater than the protection of our environment. Last year, when these savage assaults on the environment were proposed, the American people were vocally opposed and 74 percent of the people said they did not want to turn the clock back on the environment. So I hope I will attract both Democratic and Republican cosponsors to this bill, because I know the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, for the most part, are environmentalists. I know they share my concerns about the possible ecological disaster that awaits us if we do not do something to stop this mining operation from ever opening its doors so near to Yellowstone. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the bill which I now send to the desk be printed in the Record.

Mr. BUMPERS

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

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I rise to introduce a bill dealing with a proposed gold, silver, and copper mine to be operated by the Crown Butte Mining Co., a wholly-owned subsidiary of two Canadian companies, 2\1/2\ miles north of Yellowstone National Park. They also propose to construct a 72-acre impoundment area with a dam that would be somewhere between 75 and 100 feet high, which would have a plastic lining on the bottom and some sort of a cap on top to keep oxygen away from the 5.5 million tons of tailings from the mining operation that would go into this impoundment area. The purpose of keeping the oxygen away from it is to keep the waste from turning into sulfuric acid. The President of the United States flew over this area last summer and promptly thereafter, by Executive order, withdrew 19,100 acres of land in the Gallatin and Custer National Forests in Montana. The President has the authority to segregate public lands, subject to valid existing rights, and keep that land from being used for mining purposes for a period of 2 years. Then the Secretary of the Interior has the right, pursuant to the Federal Lands Policy Management Act, to withdraw that land for 20 years. My bill would prevent approximately 24,000 acres of Federal land in the area from being used for mining, subject to valid existing rights. My bill admittedly cannot legally stop Crown Butte from proceeding with the mine, assuming the proposed mine meets all of the environmental requirements. My bill and the President's action before my bill are designed to discourage them and dissuade them from doing it. I hope that Crown Butte, as good corporate citizens, will not force the issue and leave us to wonder whether or not this 5.5 million tons of tailings that they propose to impound there could possibly break loose and pollute Clarks Fork and Soda Butte Creek, which flows right into Yellowstone National Park. The American Rivers Association has listed, for the last 3 years, the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River as the most threatened river in America. The World Heritage Convention, which consists of more than 135 nations that collaborate on what they consider to be sites of international significance, has declared Yellowstone National Park as endangered because of the proposed mine. All of that does not have to tell us anything. I went to Yellowstone when I was 12 years old--breathtaking. I never forgot any part of it, the geysers, the magnificent waterfalls--all of it. Here is the first national park in America, Yellowstone, a crown jewel. To allow a mining company, in the interest of extracting $500 million to $700 million worth of gold, silver and copper, to threaten to destroy the first national park in America, one of the real crown jewels of the world, not just America, is absolutely unacceptable. From a purely philosophical standpoint, I am an unrepentant environmentalist. I have not always been, because I never fully understood it until I came to the Senate. But I have come to the conclusion that if something is going to cause a lot of economic dislocation, cost a lot of jobs, and the environmental damage is temporary and can be fully, 100 percent mitigated, there are instances when that might be acceptable. But any time you cannot conclusively show that the environmental damage you are about to do cannot be mitigated, cannot be reversed, that is a no brainer to this Senator. While Crown Butte says that their impoundment area is a state-of-the- art method of impounding these horrible, environmentally devastating tailings from that gold operation, that is a no brainer for us not to do everything we can to stop it. The American people share many heartfelt values. None is greater than the protection of our environment. Last year, when these savage assaults on the environment were proposed, the American people were vocally opposed and 74 percent of the people said they did not want to turn the clock back on the environment. So I hope I will attract both Democratic and Republican cosponsors to this bill, because I know the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, for the most part, are environmentalists. I know they share my concerns about the possible ecological disaster that awaits us if we do not do something to stop this mining operation from ever opening its doors so near to Yellowstone. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the bill which I now send to the desk be printed in the Record.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the majority leader for allowing me to just make a few remarks before we go out.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I want to again reiterate my strong opposition to the so-called gas tax cut. I have labored on the Energy Committee for 21 years and 4 months. An awful lot of that time has been spent preaching about conservation and how we must achieve some degree of energy independence. It has not been too long since cars were lined up at the service stations. Getting their gas tanks filled was a 1 to 2 hour proposition. How soon we forget. There were cries then that we ought to raise the gasoline tax by as much as $1 per gallon. I was never for that. The reason I was never for it is because people in my State, which is mainly rural, have to drive many miles to go to work and do errands. In a rural State people drive from their homes to work in communities 25 miles away. That is a 50-mile-a-day commute. A 50-mile commute a day with a $1 per gallon gasoline tax adds up to a staggering burden on middle- and low-income workers. I have, however, always been a strong champion of fuel efficiency. The first year I was in the Senate under the leadership of Scoop Jackson, who was chairman of the Energy Committee, we forced the American automobile industry to achieve fuel efficiency standards, which they did not want to do. At that point, it was already apparent to anybody who watched that the American people had become rather captivated by small Japanese-made automobiles that were getting 35 to 50 miles a gallon. The automobile industry assured Senator Jackson and other Members of the Senate that requiring them to achieve some kind of a national fuel miles-per-gallon fuel standard would be disastrous for them. In truth the car companies were wrong. We imposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy [CAFE] standards on the automobile industry. We told them that by 1985 they had to achieve an average national fuel efficiency standard of 27.5 miles per gallon per fleet. At that time in this country, the national average of all vehicles on the road, and that was roughly 30 million fewer cars than we have now, was a little over 13 miles per gallon. You did not have to be a rocket scientist to know if we were using 6\1/2\ million barrels of gasoline a day that if you could improve fuel efficiency like that, with a snap of a finger, by one-third, you could have cut the import of oil into this country by 2 million barrels a day. At that time, the United States was producing between 60 percent and 65 percent of its own needs. Just parenthetically, today we produce about 50 percent and we import the rest. It is easily the single biggest contributor to our trade deficit. In the 1980's we also raised the gas tax. The Federal gas tax had been 4 cents for a very long time. The tax was raised twice in the 1980's and twice again in the 1990's. Today it is 18.3 cents a gallon. In the past, we have always put gasoline taxes into the transportation trust funds to be used for building highways and for mass transit. In the summer of 1993, as we labored in this body to honor a commitment that the President had made during his campaign that he would cut the deficit in half during his 4-year term, he sent a proposal to the U.S. Congress. He said if you adopt this proposal it will reduce the deficit by $500 billion over the next 5 years. We have done this precisely the way the people around the coffee shops say they want it done--$250 billion in new taxes, $250 billion in spending cuts. How often have you heard people say, ``I would not mind paying more taxes but they will just spend the money.'' Believe you me, there has always been enough action taken around here to give credence to that idea. Every poll shows the American people would opt for a plan if it cuts spending dollar for dollar against tax increases. So we raised income taxes on the wealthiest of Americans and we raised the gasoline tax by 4.3 cents a gallon. What was that 4.3 cents per gallon tax worth? Over a 5-year-period it was worth $24.5 billion. That total package was worth $500 billion over a 5-year period, so we said. In fact, Madam President, as of this moment, it is headed toward being $700 billion in deficit reduction. How did we pass it? At that time what some of us like to refer to as the ``good old days,'' we had 56 Democratic Senators, 6 voted no, 50 voted aye, and Vice President Albert Gore sat in that chair and voted to break the tie of 50-50, and we passed that deficit reduction package, which included this 4.3-cent a gallon gas tax. Now we are back, and everyone wants to balance the budget. The American people have issued a nonnegotiable demand that they want the budget balanced. I happen to believe that any time the American people speak almost with one voice, they are heard here. So this body for the first time since I have been in the Senate has gotten serious about the business of balancing the budget. Let me digress to say this, Madam President. The Presiding Officer is a member of the Republican Party. I am a Democrat. There are 53 Republicans sitting on the other side and there are 47 Democrats sitting on this side. In truth, this ought to be pleasing to the ears of the American people. We would all agree on about 90 percent of what we believe to be the core values of this country. Madam President, 90 percent of the core values that have made us a great Nation. And we are, make no mistake about it. One of the values that every Democrat and every Republican and virtually everybody in the country would agree on is we should balance our budget. Where did we diverge? A couple of my very good friends on this side of the aisle are no longer here, and they are no longer here because they had the courage to be one of the 50 to vote for honest-to- God deficit reduction. If we had not done that, we would be looking at a $290 to $300 billion deficit today. One of the reasons the American people are feeling slightly better is that this year the deficit is going to be $144 billion--less than half what it was projected to be and less than half what it would have been if a few people had not screwed up their nerve and been courageous enough to vote for something that was obviously unpopular. Nobody wants to vote for a tax increase of any kind. I wish I could just wave a wand and vote to repeal the 4.3-cent gas tax and say, ``Well, we will take care of the deficit some other way.'' Madam President, this is the first time we have attempted to undo any portion of that deficit reduction package of 1993. I am opposed to it because I lost two good friends who were courageous enough to vote for it. I am opposed to it on energy efficiency grounds, and I am opposed to it because you cannot balance the budget and keep giving away the Treasury. It is really slightly hypocritical to ask the people of this place to repeal the 4.3-cent gasoline tax which will cost us, just for the remainder of this year of 1996, about $3 billion? If we take the 4.3 cents tax off for the ensuing 7 years, you are talking about $32 billion. Where are you going to get the money to offset that? The majority leader in the House of Representatives said, ``Well, let us take it out of education. We are not getting a very good bang for the buck on our money for education. We will take it out of education.'' Madam President, the rules of the Senate do not permit me to say what I really would like to say about that. But needless to say, that is a crazy idea. Somebody else has said, ``Well, we are getting ready to impose a tax on the banks and S&L's to go under the so-called SAIF to pay off the bonds that we issued to bail the S&L's out. So we will just take it out of the savings and loan insurance fund. You think about that one. We are going to reduce the gas tax 4.3 cents a gallon and make it up by charging the same amount to people of this country because they have deposits in the bank. That is passed on to the consumer one way or another. If we make the banks and the S&L's pay more into the insurance fund, they will pass it on to the customers. So if you say, ``Well, we will take the gas tax off, but we will pick it up over here in the bank fund,'' I do not consider that the most enlightened solution either. Madam President, 3 weeks ago the price of oil was $24 a barrel. Yesterday it was $21 a barrel--12.5 percent less than it was 3 weeks ago. It takes a while before that reduced price of oil works its way through the pipeline, and the consumers get the benefit of it. But the Energy Information Administration says by October the price of oil will be $17 a barrel. I wish to goodness we could get this Presidential election over with so we could start talking seriously about things that really matter instead of playing around with things like this for whatever political impact they might have in November. Madam President, how are we going to tell the American people that their gasoline prices are going to go down 4.3 cents a gallon? Answer. We are not, because we do not have any way of knowing that. The oil companies can put that 4.3 cents a gallon in their pocket. But more to the point, how do we make up the $3 billion we are going to lose? Nobody has said yet anything credible. No credible offer has been made as to how we are going to offset it. I frankly think the politics of this thing is not on the side of the proponents. Yesterday, I had 150 people in a committee room over in the Dirksen Building, members of the chamber of commerce from my State. They were all here for their big national shindig. So for openers I just asked, ``How many people here would like to repeal the 4.3 cents per gallon gas tax?'' This is the chamber of commerce; these are business people normally who dislike taxes intensely. I did not embellish. I did not try to argue one way or the other. I just asked the question point blank. Five people. ``How many would like to leave the gas tax alone?'' Roughly 70 to 90 voted to leave it alone. Today, the rural cooperatives were in town. I heard the distinguished Senator from North Dakota today say that farmers use six to seven times as much gasoline as the ordinary driver uses. There must have been about 75 people at the meeting today. ``How many of you would like to repeal the 4.3-cent gas tax?'' Three. All the rest were opposed. So for all of the reasons I have enumerated plus others--and I will not take additional time, Madam President, because we are ready to shut this operation down for the night, but for all of those reasons and many more, the repeal of the 4.3-cents-per-gallon gas tax is a foolish idea. And I am not going to vote for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, which is an equally foolish idea. So many people in this body treat the Constitution like it is a rough draft that they are supposed to finish up somehow or other. Everybody wants to amend the Constitution. I do not. I have only voted for one amendment, and I intend to think twice before voting for another amendment. I do not like a lot of the Members of this body tampering with what Madison and Adams, Hamilton and Franklin did 207 years ago. Madam President, if we ever debate this gasoline tax, which I understood we were going to take up today, I will be back in the Chamber largely repeating what I just said plus some additional things. But I can tell you the American people are not behind this. They do not want it. If you want to do something to please the American people, get the budget balanced. Do not be tinkering around with the politics of the 4.3-cent gasoline tax. And above all, do not ask me to vote to undo the deficit reduction we have going which has been successful to a staggering degree. We should not start unraveling it now because there is a Presidential election in November. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, if we do not hurry up and get the Presidential race over with, I do not know what will happen in this country. How Senator Dole has voted on the gas tax in the past is not relevant to me. What kind of a country my children and grandchildren inherit is. I happen to strongly disagree with Senator Dole on repealing the 4.3- cent gasoline tax that we put on--not to build highways but to balance the budget--that fateful August day in 1993. That particular deficit reduction package, in my opinion, is still the hallmark of the Clinton administration, the most responsible thing the President has done, the most courageous thing he has done. When we open our mail each day a certain portion of it is hate mail. Some of it is just plain critical. Some of it is very complimentary. When you get to the hate mail it is always, ``Why don't you people screw up your nerve and make those courageous decisions?'' I have said on the floor of the Senate many times the definition of a courageous decision is an unpopular one. The definition of a courageous vote is an unpopular vote. If it were popular, it would not be courageous. How many times do you see people walk down this aisle and vote, and they look to see how it is going, and it is 50 to 5 or 50 to 10, yeas versus nays, 9 times out of 10, nobody wants to be caught out there with 5 Senators, so they vote yea, too. In 1993, every Republican Senator voted against that bill, and perhaps this clamor to repeal the gas tax which was part of the deficit reduction package, maybe the Republicans would like to find some justification for the fact that every single one of them voted no on a very courageous deficit reduction package which today, 1996, will give us a $144 billion deficit this year. Before we passed that bill in 1993, we were facing a $290 billion deficit for this year. I was proud of that vote in 1993. I am proud of it now. I do not intend to take the easy political way out by voting for the repeal of the 4.3-cent gasoline tax. That might gain you applause for about 10 minutes back home, but nobody, so far, has said how we are going to make up this $3 billion-plus in revenue we lose with the repeal of this gas tax. Now, you talk about an easy, popular vote, here is one. You vote to cut that gas tax for the rest of the year, it comes to about $3 billion, and you do not have to figure out where you are going to get the $3 billion. What an easy vote that would be. I saw in the paper this morning where the House and Senate Armed Services Committees have voted to increase defense spending in 1997 by over $12 billion. Why? Make no bones about it. So they can portray President Clinton as weak on defense. But the question ought to be, ``Weak against whom?'' Who is the enemy that we are going to spend $270 billion next year to defend against? The Soviet Union is gone. Russia is a basket case. The Chinese do not even have antiaircraft missiles on their ships, such ships as they have. That $270 billion, in 1997, will be the equivalent of the amount that our 10 most likely enemies, combined, will spend. It is twice as much as the 5 most likely enemies will spend, including China and Russia. Mr. President, $12 billion is a lot of money to prove that the President is weak on defense. Why do we not just get on the floor and say, ``You are right, the President is weak on defense; now do not spend the $12 billion"? Or you might say, ``Please tell us the enemy that you are proposing to spend this $12 billion to defend against.'' Now, I do not normally read Charles Krauthammer in the Post, but I read it this morning because it dealt with this gasoline tax, and it was a beautiful article. He hit the nail right on the head. Everybody is looking for a scapegoat. In my 22 years in the Senate, when somebody made a terrible mistake in judgment, or somebody was just plain negligent, if the incident had any political appeal, somebody else could always be counted on to call for a hearing. Congress has to think about this. We have now spent over $30 million on Whitewater, and counting, and the American people are still wondering what it is about. Now there is going to be a hearing in the House about the fact that the President did not take an affirmative or a negative position on Iran furnishing arms to the Bosnians. I doubt very seriously if there was anybody in the U.S. Senate that did not know it was going on. But it is only now after the fact that we have to have a hearing. We have to investigate this. Why does everybody want to investigate everything? Because that is where the television cameras come. If you hold a hearing in your committee and bring the television cameras in and turn those red lights on, they will keep going forever if they can. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to know why gas prices are up. They are up because, under the Clean Air Act, we demanded reformulated gasoline so the air would be cleaner, and that costs about a nickel a gallon. We pay it here in Washington, but not in Little Rock because our air was not dirty enough to require us to use reformulated gasoline. What else? The average driver in this country is driving 2,000 miles more per year per car than they did 10 years ago. We have a lot of younger drivers being added to the driver rolls. We are driving bigger cars and more trucks. If you are a yuppie, you have to have a sport utility vehicle. I do not know what those suckers get per mile per gallon, but I know one thing--if you are in the in-crowd, you sure better have a Blazer, or an Explorer or a Cherokee. We took all the speed limits off. Montana does not even have a speed limit. What else? We had a harsh winter, and we diverted so much of our oil to heating oil instead of gasoline. So our stocks of gasoline were low. What else? Everybody thought we were going to let Iraq start selling oil on the world markets. Those are seven reasons the price of gasoline has gone up. As Charles Krauthammer so eloquently said in his column this morning, ``Why has all this happened? How about a wild guess? Because supply is down and demand is up.'' How long will this go on? Who knows? The energy information office says that prices will start down by August. They are down 4 cents where I buy gasoline now from where they were 2 weeks ago. But this is a Presidential year. You have to get what you can when you can get it. My good friend, the junior Senator from Louisiana, John Breaux, said that to cut the gasoline tax--that 4.3 cents per gallon--off and think that you are going to do something to relieve this problem is like spitting in the ocean and hoping to make it rise. Mr. President, if we do this, if this is brought to the floor of the Senate, Senator Bryan of Nevada and I are going to offer an amendment to raise what we call the CAFE standards. The CAFE standards--for the uninitiated who do not serve on the Energy Committee--are the average miles per gallon that we require the automobile makers to meet. Right now, we have CAFE standards that have given us a 21-mile-per-gallon average of all of our vehicles. In 1973, when the Arab oil embargo hit, the average car in America got 13 miles per gallon. With Scoop Jackson, who was a great Senator from Washington and chairman of the Energy Committee, we passed the CAFE standards and said to the automobile industry that they have to provide cars that do better. They have to be more fuel efficient. They assured us that they were going to go broke. Every time we ask them to do something, we are assured that they are going to go broke. But that did not influence us much. That is when they thought the little Japanese cars were funny looking and the American people would never buy them. We probably saved their lives by imposing the CAFE standards on them. In any event, it was 13 miles per gallon. In 1990, we achieved 21 miles per gallon, and there it stands today. We have not improved our mileage per gallon one iota in 6 years. And so Senator Bryan and I will offer an amendment if this gas tax repeal is debated. We will say forget Presidential politics, forget the grandstanding. Let us do something meaningful. Let us raise the fuel efficiency of all the vehicles in this country. That will actually do something about saving energy. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group says that if we raised the CAFE standards, which are about 27.5 miles per gallon now for automobiles, a little less than that for trucks, to 45 miles per gallon--which could be done--for automobiles, and 34 miles per gallon for small trucks, in 10 years' time we would save $65 billion. You think of what that would do to our trade deficit. Everybody knows that the oil we import is the biggest single contributor to our trade deficit and our balance of payments problems. But it is very difficult to pass a CAFE standard because that inconveniences people. It is true, oil company profits were really excessive the first quarter, and the oil companies are taking advantage of these price increases because the demand is high and the supply is low. But is that not the good old American system? Is not supply and demand at the very heart of capitalism? So, Mr. President, you can never get it perfect. The President wants the cattlemen to get a better shake, and I understand that. This morning I looked at the commodity prices. It is absolutely incredible. Wheat is almost $6 a bushel, soybeans $8 a bushel, corn $4.50 a bushel. And you know what this body did. It voted to do away with the law that made those prices possible and said we are going to pass this freedom- to-farm bill. You can get 85 cents a pound for cotton, $6 for wheat, $4.50 for corn, and we will give you a big fat check on top of that. It is going to cost $21 billion more over the next 7 years. It is the silliest thing this body has ever done. Even the farmers did not want it. So the cattlemen are having to pay these exorbitant prices for grain, and the supply of cattle is high. You can sell oil out of the strategic petroleum reserve. That is sort of like spitting in the ocean, too. And you can repeal the 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax, which is worth $27 a year to the average car owner in this country, and say the deficit will be up $3 billion more this year, and if we allow it to stay, it will be up by several billion more in the next 2 years. Everybody wants to vote for the easy, popular things, and if it raises the deficit, so be it. That is just something we talk about. Well, Mr. President, I do not know that anybody wants to filibuster a proposal to repeal that 4.3-cent gas tax, but I hope it will not come up. If it does, I hope the debate will be extended. It would be the height of folly. Mr. President, the minority leader will be here momentarily, I assume. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, while the Senator from Maine is still on the floor, let me say that his magnificent accolade to our departed brother, Ron Brown, is one of the reasons so many of us are very sad that he has chosen to leave the Senate. Those remarks were eloquent. I hope they were heard by everybody in the Senate on this slow, Friday afternoon. Senator Cohen has always been in the forefront of issues that really matter, where partisan politics do not have any role. He has, without fail, been a giant in this body. Those remarks prove conclusively that a lot of people are still in this business because public service is a noble calling. As I say, I do not know of anybody on either side of the aisle that has not expressed profound regret at Senator Cohen's decision to retire at the end of this year. He alluded to the press and how they can very seldom find anything nice to say about a public servant until after they die or retire. Jim Fallows discusses this phenomenon in his book, titled ``Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy.'' It is a magnificent book, and I recommend it. Fallows has made a couple of speeches in which he talks about this problem. For example, in the weeks before Ron Brown died, the New York Times editorial page was castigating him and a couple days after he died he was praised on that same editorial page. I talked to a Senator yesterday afternoon who decided in 1994 not to run again. He said the major newspaper in his State had never said a kind word about him that he could remember until he announced his retirement. He said he then got more accolades over the next 6 months then he had had in his entire public career. I suppose you could attribute that to human nature. It is a natural thing. It would be nice and it would be gratifying if there was some recognition for a few people who labor in the vineyards year after year because they believe in this democracy and they believe in our political system and they want to operate within it, not like the Freemen of Montana. It would be very helpful if somebody said something nice. Most of us get enough accolades to keep our ego fueled. But I just want to again say, Mr. President, Senator Cohen and I have teamed up on several causes since we both have been here together. I will miss him greatly. One of the reasons is because of the statesmanship he demonstrated this afternoon. Mr. President, I think that I can say what I want to say about the gas tax within 10 minutes, but rather than interrupt my remarks, let me ask unanimous consent I be permitted to proceed for such time as I may use.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I think that I may be the first person today to speak against this resolution, but let me say, first of all, I am delighted to do so. It is, admittedly, a freebie. You can vote for it in the absolute certainty that it is going nowhere, and you can send out your newsletters and press releases and tell your constituents that you did your best. I have heard a lot of speakers this afternoon say, ``Well, this is popular with the American people.'' Slavery was once popular also, but I don't hear any of my colleagues arguing that slavery was a good idea. Prohibition was also once popular. Do you know what we got out of prohibition because it was popular? Organized crime, and that is all we got out of prohibition. Organized crime is still ensconced as part of our society because we voted for a constitutional amendment because it was popular. In my State of Arkansas in 1992 the voters approved term limits, by a 60-40 margin, for both State and Federal officers. As you know, the Supreme Court, by a very narrow vote of 5 to 4, ruled that the people of Arkansas did not have the right to limit the terms of Federal officials which had been set by the Constitution. It is still in effect. Interestingly, while 60 percent of the voters of Arkansas were voting by a 60-percent margin for term limits, they reelected me to a fourth term by a margin of 60 percent. You can only conclude that it is all those other guys who they are wanting to get rid of. I do not quarrel with the popularity of this proposition with the American people. They have a right to favor it. But I also want to say that one of the biggest responsibilities Members of Congress have is to be an educator as well as a legislator, and I have never passed up the opportunity at a Rotary Club or a chamber of commerce banquet to express my unalterable opposition to term limits. It is not meant to demean, it is meant to give people a side that they never hear at the coffee shop and why I think it is a bad idea, why Alexander Hamilton thought it was a bad idea, and why the Founding Fathers dismissed it almost summarily. People have a right to believe something is a good idea, but I have an obligation, if I happen to disagree with that, to try my very best to educate them, at least to an alternative view. This whole idea is based on the assumption that every man and woman who seeks public office does so, not to serve the public good, not to promote a national agenda, which is good for our people, but to feather his own nest, to pursue a personal agenda. ``You just cannot trust those people in the U.S. Senate for more than 12 years, because you give them 13 years and they lose all of their integrity, all of their interest in the national good.'' Unhappily, occasionally somebody around here proves that to be true. Somebody proves himself to be dishonest or unethical or just a lousy Member of Congress. But I tell you, Mr. President, the vast majority of the 535 Members of Congress are honest, they are ethical, they are hard working and they are fighting for what they believe is in our national interest. Ethics has become a very big issue around here. Most secretaries and office managers keep the Ethics Committee on autodial. So intent are they in complying with arcane rules that a lot of people around here do not understand, and the ethics manual gets thicker and thicker each year. In 1960, 70 percent of the people in this country said they had quite a bit of confidence in Congress. In 1960, while 70 percent of the people were saying they had quite a bit of confidence in Congress, Members of Congress could take a $100,000 contribution in $100 bills and did not have to report it to anybody. Members of Congress could make a speech and take $5,000 in honoraria and did not have to report it to anybody. They could practice law. They could take the people who came into their offices soliciting their favors, lobbyists and could refer them to their law firms back home and then share in the profits of that law firm that fall. And 70 percent of the people in this country thought things in Washington were just hunky-dory, because they did not know it. Today, the ethics manual grows thicker and thicker, to the point that people are afraid to take an insulated coffee mug from the Rotary Club, and you dare not risk allowing anybody to buy you a dinner for fear that it might exceed $50, if you are a Senator, or any amount if you are a House Member. Every Member must file an ethics report of what stock he owns, the value of it, where his income came from last year. It is all there, and the press microscopically examines it every year, and it is appropriate. That is the way it ought to be. So today, you have to report every significant contribution made to your campaign and lay bare your own personal net worth. And you cannot receive honoraria for any speeches that you give. And today, 1996, 23 percent of the people of this country have quite a bit of confidence in Congress. Can you imagine the people in this Chamber voting aye on this resolution, and essentially saying, ``You're right.'' I will be a good, decent, ethical, honest Senator for 12 years. But if you elect me to a third term, look out, I'm going to be uncontrollable. If you allow me 6 more years, don't count on anything.'' That is what we are saying here. I cannot be trusted with more than 12 years in this body. What we are engaged in here is the height of pandering. This is not a serious debate. If it were, why would the manager of the resolution offer immediately seven amendments which are identical to the resolution to make sure that no Senator can offer an amendment to improve the resolution? That is right. We are going to talk about this resolution until 2:15 tomorrow afternoon. We are going to have a cloture vote, and cloture is going to fail miserably. Everybody here knows it is going to fail miserably. Everybody knows this is a freebie. Do you know something else? Of the 45 Senators that voted for Senator Ashcroft's resolution in support of term limits last year, 25 of them have been here longer than two terms, which is what this resolution would deal with. Do you know why else they filled the tree? To keep anybody from offering an amendment to it, because they knew that Senator Leahy or I would offer an amendment to make the term-limits resolution apply to terms already served. They did not want any of that retroactive stuff. You have been here five terms, and you are hot for term limits? Of course you do not want it to be retroactive so you cannot even run again. I do not mean this personally because I admire him and I like him and I consider him my friend. The senior Senator from South Carolina will be eligible for four more terms if this resolution were to pass and it took 7 years for the people of this country to adopt it--four more. He would be 117. I would be eligible for three more terms. Oh, it has all been carefully crafted to take care of those who have. We have a saying in Arkansas ``them what has, gets.'' Oh, it is very popular. You know, when you are standing before an audience and there is a question: ``Senator, how do you feel about an amendment to the Constitution to balance the budget?'' ``I'm for that.'' ``How do you feel about flag burning?'' ``You bet. Count me in.'' ``Well, how about term limits?'' ``You bet. I'm for term limits.'' It is so easy to agree with what you know is popular among the group you happen to be speaking to. I saw a story the other day in the Hill newspaper discussing how the Republicans requested that term limit supporters not punish the junior Senator from Kentucky because he is adamantly opposed to this resolution. I guess only the Democrat opponents of term limits are worthy of criticism. You think about even considering punishing somebody for the courage of their convictions. The proponents of term limits say that is the reason they want it, so people will be courageous and stand up for what they believe. Mr. President, do you know what a courageous vote is? It is an unpopular vote. If it were not unpopular, it would not be courageous. So the people say, ``If we limit them to 12 years, they will be courageous knowing they cannot run again. If we won't let them run again after 12 years, they are going to be statesmen. They will say what they really believe. And they are going to say courageous things. They are going to be men of principle.'' Here is what Alexander Hamilton said about that in Federalist paper No. 72: There are few men who would not feel much less zeal in the discharge of a duty when they were conscious that the advantage of the station with which it was connected must be relinquished at a determinant period, than when they were permitted to entertain a hope of obtaining, by meriting, a continuation of them. That is right. Let them stand for reelection on the merits of their past 6 years' performance. Do not pass some kind of undemocratic nonsense saying the people do not have enough sense to know who they want to vote for. I daresay, my colleague, Senator Pryor, would probably have run without opposition this time if he chose to run again. But if he had an opponent, I can tell you he would have won overwhelmingly. Do you know why? Because he has been a man of conviction, he has been a man of courage, he has not jumped under his desk every time the National Rifle Association issued a press release. He has talked sense to his people. And they love him for it. And Alexander Hamilton says that is what Members of Congress are supposed to do. Why take away that right of the people to elect whomever they choose? What was the origin of term limits? Let me tell you, I have so many friends on the other side, I do not like to describe them in terms of partisanship a lot of times--but I think organizations, many times ultraconservative organizations, have made up their minds that the Democrats were never, never going to lose control of Congress if we did not have term limits. So it became fashionable. Congress was losing credibility and respect and prestige with the people all along. As I said, down to 23 percent. So they said, ``We believe we can sell this constitutional amendment to limit people to 12 years in the Senate and 6 or 12 years in the House.'' So what happened? The American people said, we will decide for ourselves. The two Senators--one from Tennessee and one from Arizona--are sitting here and are the beneficiaries of the American people saying, ``We're tired of the Democrats. We're going to give the Republicans a chance.'' That is the reason those Senators were elected in 1994. That is what is called term limits, allowing the people to vote. They just did it. I personally hope the American people are not happy with their decision, but in any event that is their call, not mine. Mr. President, I think about some of the greatest Senators this body has ever had, who would not even be an asterisk in the history books if they had been limited to 12 years. When I came to the U.S. Senate, Abe Ribicoff, Jack Javits, Cliff Case, Jim Pearson, Scoop Jackson, Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, on and on the list goes of truly great Senators, Republican and Democrat, that would be a footnote in the history books if this thing had been on the books. Finally, let me just close by expressing my utter contempt for trying to solve every single problem from whether drinking water ought to be on the Senator's desk, to term limits, by an amendment to the Constitution. There are a few people in this body who apparently feel the Constitution is just a rough draft for them to finish up. I am one of those people who believe that Hamilton, Adams, Ben Franklin, James Madison, and the other Framers was the greatest assemblage of minds ever under one roof in the history of the world, who produced the document second only in its powerfulness to the Holy Bible. I do not vote often for constitutional amendments. I am not saying I never would. All this nonsense that comes through this place--``Let's amend the Constitution,'' think about it. Over 17,000 efforts to amend the Constitution since 1789--17,000, count them. Taking the Bill of Rights out, the first 10 amendments which were adopted almost as part of the Constitution, and the American people, out of those 17,000 efforts, have chosen to amend the Constitution 18 times. You take prohibition which was ratified in the late 1920's, and the repeal of prohibition, take those two out, and the people of this country have tinkered with the Constitution 16 times out of 17,000 to 18,000 resolutions offered since 1789. There have been 83 amendments introduced in this Congress, and 2,000 since I came to the Senate. How can we conclude that Members of the Congress do not think the Constitution is just a rough draft, when they treat it with such contempt? As I said a moment ago, who likes flag burning? I do not. But it is presented in political terms. It is not presented the way things were presented in Philadelphia 206 years ago. It is always politics. Let me digress just a moment to say I have been reading a book by James Fallows called ``Breaking the News: How the Media is Undermining American Democracy,'' and he makes this point, that if you watch ``Face the Nation,'' ``Meet the Press,'' and David Brinkley on Sunday morning, you hear how well Medicare or Medicaid is working. Do you hear anything about the environment and how it is working and the new regulations coming out of EPA? No, those are policy decisions. For a writer to write about a policy, that writer has to go to the stacks and do some work, find out the history of them. Why do we have Medicaid? Because we do not want elderly people laying in the streets, we do not want children without health care--a policy decision that was debated a very long time here before we adopted Medicaid policy. Why do we have school lunches? So children are not hungry. Why do we have food stamps? So nobody is hungry. We did not do that willy- nilly. That was debated in the Senate. We adopted it as a policy, as a great nation who believes in trying to help people. So when you hear all the gurus on the Sunday morning talk shows: ``What do you think about block grants? Do you think that will help Bill Clinton or hurt him? Do you think that will help Bob Dole or hurt him?'' Not a question of whether the States can do a better job administering it. Will they comply with the policy we made that we do not want children to go without health care, we do not want the elderly to be lying on the streets, we want them taken care of in nursing homes? No, you do not hear that. It is the politics of this issue. So it is with this. What is the politics of it? Well, you do not have to be brilliant to know what the politics of this is. If you want to go home and tell the townhall meeting and the chamber of commerce and Rotary Club, if you want them to stand up and clap, you vote ``aye.'' If you took your oath when you came here to perfect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all kinds of assaults on it, vote ``no.'' I promise you, when the people of this country voted the way they did in 1994, they were not saying they wanted to turn their back on the environment. They were saying they did want the budget balanced, but they did not say they wanted to cut educational funds, because the one thing people in this country would still vote taxes for is for the education of their children. They did not say they wanted Medicare whacked, though everybody knows Medicare is going to have to be reformed. Be honest about it and talk sense about it. Mr. President, this will be the last time we will address term limits for some time to come and get it off the agenda. Everybody knows it is going nowhere, but everybody can go home and say they did their best. But they did not. They did their worst. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I am introducing the National Rural Law Enforcement Act of 1996. This bill is not very complicated. It establishes a National Center for Rural Law Enforcement, to provide rural police and sheriff departments with the training they need to meet the demands of modern rural law enforcement. Consider a few facts and figures about rural crime and law enforcement: One third of all Americans live in rural areas. Ninety percent of the law enforcement agencies in our country serve populations of 25,000 or fewer citizens. Three quarters of those departments serve fewer than 10,000 citizens. Crime in rural communities has risen more than 35 percent during the last decade. The Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has been the headquarters of a movement by rural law enforcement administrators to fill the training void they face. The Institute has sponsored a number of conferences in five regions around the country to identify the training needs of rural law enforcement and prescribe measures to meet those needs. This bill is a response to their efforts and the needs they have documented and described. The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement will: Provide rural law enforcement managers training tailored to rural law enforcement needs; provide research and technical assistance to rural law enforcement agencies; provide a communications network linking rural agency heads around the country, develop curriculum tailored to the needs of rural law enforcement officers; articulate the viewpoint of rural law enforcement professionals; and project its training capability to sites in communities all over the United States. Every Senator represents rural communities. As we travel our States, we hear time and again about sophisticated and vicious crime in small rural communities, the sort of crime we used to believe was found only in big cities. The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement will help to equip rural law enforcement professionals to deal with those problems in the most effective manner, with the same tools their urban colleagues enjoy. The NCRLE will enjoy the participation and input of the FBI and the Justice Department and some Federal funding, but its heart and soul will be the State and local law enforcement officers of rural America. It represents the kind of Federal State local cooperation that is so vital today. I hope that arrangement, along with the obvious need for a National Center for Rural Law Enforcement, will bring bipartisan support for this bill. The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement is necessary. It will meet a vital need for rural America, at low cost in the context of a true Federal partnership. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor the National Rural Law Enforcement Act of 1996.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I am introducing the National Rural Law Enforcement Act of 1996. This bill is not very complicated. It establishes a National Center for Rural Law Enforcement, to provide rural police and sheriff departments with the training they need to meet the demands of modern rural law enforcement. Consider a few facts and figures about rural crime and law enforcement: One third of all Americans live in rural areas. Ninety percent of the law enforcement agencies in our country serve populations of 25,000 or fewer citizens. Three quarters of those departments serve fewer than 10,000 citizens. Crime in rural communities has risen more than 35 percent during the last decade. The Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has been the headquarters of a movement by rural law enforcement administrators to fill the training void they face. The Institute has sponsored a number of conferences in five regions around the country to identify the training needs of rural law enforcement and prescribe measures to meet those needs. This bill is a response to their efforts and the needs they have documented and described. The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement will: Provide rural law enforcement managers training tailored to rural law enforcement needs; provide research and technical assistance to rural law enforcement agencies; provide a communications network linking rural agency heads around the country, develop curriculum tailored to the needs of rural law enforcement officers; articulate the viewpoint of rural law enforcement professionals; and project its training capability to sites in communities all over the United States. Every Senator represents rural communities. As we travel our States, we hear time and again about sophisticated and vicious crime in small rural communities, the sort of crime we used to believe was found only in big cities. The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement will help to equip rural law enforcement professionals to deal with those problems in the most effective manner, with the same tools their urban colleagues enjoy. The NCRLE will enjoy the participation and input of the FBI and the Justice Department and some Federal funding, but its heart and soul will be the State and local law enforcement officers of rural America. It represents the kind of Federal State local cooperation that is so vital today. I hope that arrangement, along with the obvious need for a National Center for Rural Law Enforcement, will bring bipartisan support for this bill. The National Center for Rural Law Enforcement is necessary. It will meet a vital need for rural America, at low cost in the context of a true Federal partnership. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor the National Rural Law Enforcement Act of 1996.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I wonder if it is too early for the majority leader to tell us if plans have been made for a session tomorrow and, if so, will votes be included tomorrow?

Mr. BUMPERS. Will the majority leader yield for a question?

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I want to associate myself with the remarks of the distinguished chairman of our committee and the principle author of S. 942. He and I, as well as our staffs, worked together on this bill in a true spirit of bipartisanship. The shortness of time between the markup of S. 942 and consideration on the floor did not permit the staff to prepare a full-blown report, as we usually do. Instead, we have offered this section-by-section analysis as a joint explanatory statement by the managers, even though there was not a formal conference on this bill. The House chose to amend S. 942 in several respects. The chairman and I were consulted about these changes, and we agree that they are helpful. It is our hope that anyone reading this statement will treat it exactly as they would a formal Senate committee report since it reflects the consensus views of many Senators on both sides of the aisle who have participated in completion of S. 942, which is now title III, in H.R. 3136.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the distinguished ranking member, my good friend from Vermont. First, I want to express my profound gratitude to my colleague, Senator Pryor, for the very laudatory and kind words he delivered on the floor a moment ago when he referred to a provision in the bill to name the U.S. Department of Agriculture Small Farmer Research Center in Arkansas after me. As I sat there in my office watching Senator Pryor deliver those accolades I couldn't but help question if it was really me he was describing. He laid it on pretty thick. The thing that makes Senator Pryor easily the most popular politician in Arkansas is because he is one of the most generous to a fault and one of the hardest working people I have ever known. You never see his name mentioned in the Arkansas press that it does not say, ``Senator Pryor, the most popular politician in Arkansas,'' as the lead to whatever story they are reporting. I have been deeply honored to have him as a colleague, and deeply distressed to know that he will depart this body at the end of this session of Congress. We have had what I think is probably as fine a working relationship as any two Senators in the U.S. Senate have ever had. But I want to publicly express my gratitude to Senator Pryor for all the kind things he did say about me. He gave me much too much credit. Of course, that is one of the things that makes him so popular back home. He gives other people credit for everything that happens, no matter what his role was in it. In this particular case I can honestly say the Senate would have been justified in naming that after an aide, my agriculture assistant back in those days, Rhona Weaver. It was essentially Rhona's idea. She worked with the State leaders and the leaders of the community. I would be remiss if I did not pay tribute to her. We politicians take credit for everything, but the truth of the matter is most of it originates with our staff, and this is a classic case in point. I am deeply honored, Mr. President. And now, because I detest this bill so much, I am in the very ambivalent position of having to vote against a bill that places a great honor on me. Nevertheless, I have no choice but to vote no. Let me just say, in these few remarks, that I personally thought the bill before us, which will probably be always remembered as the freedom-to-farm bill, was fatally flawed in concept. Senator Conrad of North Dakota said it more appropriately several times, and it bears repeating. This bill is like the people who followed Jim Jones down to Guyana, and he told them, when they were committing mass suicide, to drink the Kool-Aid, it tastes good, and the children drank the Kool- Aid. It was after they got it down that the problems began. And so it is with this bill. It is going to taste good to the farmers, initially, because they are going to be paid a handsome bonus on top of record commodity prices. They do not even necessarily have to farm to get the bonus. The conference report did make one improvement from the earlier Senate version. To get the bonus, they at least have to engage in some sort of agricultural activity. But I can think of all kinds of activities that I can argue are ``agricultural'' in nature but do not resemble farming as farmers in my State would recognize it. You are going to see ``60 Minutes'' stories of farmers who are maybe getting 80 cents or a dollar a pound for cotton, plus a very handsome, generous payment from ``Uncle Sugar.'' To make matters worse, depending on how they finally define ``agricultural activity,'' you might see farm payments being paid to people who no longer plant a seed or turn a clod of dirt. That is not what farmers want. They do not want welfare. That is what this is, pure and simple. Actually, I suppose you could argue that welfare is what you give to people who need it, which may not be the case with these freedom-to-farm handouts. But the problem is going to be just like drinking the Kool-Aid. Seven years from now, or sooner, when these payments have been terminated or have dwindled to nearly nothing, if commodity prices are back where they were 2 years ago, I do not know what is going to happen. We either go back to the drawing board and draft a bill similar to the one we are abandoning, or we just say ``adios'' to the farmers of America. I might remind my colleagues that in 1987 when the farm credit crisis was at its worst, the Congress did not abandon America's farmers. We stood by them in bad times as well as good and helped many of them make a substantial come-back. But with this bill, we are virtually saying ``don't let the door hit you on the way out.'' The tragedy of this is that many aspects of current law--the marketing loan in particular--that we have used all of these years is working. And they are working as they were intended. According to the CBO baseline estimates--one of our more esoteric exercises--USDA will show a $4 billion reduction in spending of farm programs in 1995 below what we anticipated less than a year ago. While terms like ``baseline'' do not mean anything to laymen, we all understand that we spent $4 billion less last year than we anticipated because wheat, cotton, and corn are well above the target price. Rice is really the only major commodity that is below the target price, and under current law, rice farmers would benefit. If commodity prices in the next 7 years stay as high as they are right now, the freedom-to-farm bill will cost $21 billion more than current law. In fact, if prices stayed at current prices, and rice improved a little, then every penny paid out as freedom-to-farm welfare is money we have no business spending this way. I can think of lots of better uses of this money for rural America. We are cutting conservation, we are cutting research, we are cutting rural water and sewer programs, we are cutting rural housing, and the list goes on and on. If you will give these billions of dollars that you are willing to give farmers already making record profits to us on the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee for discretionary spending, I will show you how we can put it to use in a way that can really make a difference in farming communities in every State of this Nation. Finally, Mr. President, let me speak about the Market Promotion Program, which Senator Bryan and I have tried to kill as religiously as I have tried to kill anything in my life. On a very handsome vote in the U.S. Senate, we cut the Market Promotion Program--the program that subsidizes Tyson, McDonald's, Hiram Walker, Gallo Brothers, and many other of the biggest corporations in America These subsidies were paid to them for advertising they ought to be, and perhaps would be, doing on their own, according to the GAO. Finally, we got that program cut back to $70 million less than 2 months ago on the floor of the U.S. Senate. What do you think? Here it is reincarnated in this bill at $90 million. Senator Bryan has already spoken on some of the ways the reforms he and I successfully brought to this program were dismantled one by one. Defenders of this program may have tried to hide their changes by changing the name of the program or by using language that appeared to be making reforms but were actually just a restatement of current law. MPP may have become MAP--and I won't begin here to describe the fun the press can have with this new name when you consider some of the former program beneficiaries--but it is really nothing new. Fortune 500 companies will still find ways to taxpayer-finance their already huge advertising budgets and foreign companies can still get the federal government to advertise in a way that might be adverse to similar U.S. companies. And so, is the only reform a provision to prohibit giving federal assistance to foreign companies for the purpose of promoting foreign agricultural production? And they call this bill the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act [FAIR]? This measure is hardly an improvement or a reform, and it certainly isn't fair. So MPP, MAP, or whatever it ultimately gets called, lives on. I guess that is one of the unique things about the U.S. Senate. Nothing ever really dies. Rasputin finally died, but it seems that the Market Promotion Program, or whatever you call it, never will. So while there may be some things in the bill that have some redeeming value, they seem to have miraculously escaped my attention under the glare of such unbelievable policies as those I have just described. So, Mr. President, when the roll is called, I will have no choice but to vote ``no'' on this. That is not to say that I do not admire the distinguished chairman and ranking member for their endless hours of trying to craft something that this body could agree on and that the House could agree on. Maybe it is the very best anybody could do. I do not know. But those best efforts do not require me to vote ``aye.'' Therefore, I will vote ``no.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Yes.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 2 minutes on the time of the Senator from Massachusetts, to be followed by Senator Pryor, who has some time coming.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I was sitting in my office earlier this afternoon and the senior Senator from Arizona came to the floor and chastised President Clinton for apparently discussing on the telephone with President Yeltsin the poultry embargo that the Russians had imposed against all American poultry. The Senator suggested that he hoped that the President had much greater things to discuss with the President of Russia. Now, Mr. President, I do not know what they talked about, but I personally applaud President Clinton for bringing up that very difficult issue. The Russians import $2.1 billion worth of all products in the United States every year, a little over $2 billion, and one- third of that, over $700 million of that, is poultry. Not just my State--it is North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas. Now, the Senator from Arizona acted as though there were something small or childish about the President talking to President Yeltsin about that embargo, which has now been solved. The President did exactly what I would expect him to do. I know that the Senator from Arizona is not speaking for Senator Dole. Would he say the same thing if they embargoed rice or wheat? Would we have heard that same speech if President Clinton had called President Yeltsin about a wheat embargo? I do not think so. I know that if Senator Dole ever became President and we had that kind of an embargo, in my opinion, he would not hesitate to pick up the phone and call the President of Russia about it. I am just amazed. Here is a big trade issue, and trade is about all we talk about here anymore and about the so-called 301 retaliatory measures. I suspect, frankly, that President Clinton's intervention on that helped resolve it, and the people of my State are working today, the people in North Carolina, Alabama, and Texas are working today because the President called the President of Russia and said, ``This is a funny issue. Why don't you let up?'' I think that is what solved the problem. I applaud President Clinton for his intervention. I deplore people trying to treat that in such a cavalier, simplistic manner.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I do not mind yielding to the leader. He has a much busier schedule than I do. Who would be next on that side?

Mr. BUMPERS. And then it would come back to me?