Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Does the Senator from Maryland wish to speak on this issue?

Mr. BUMPERS. Would the Senator from West Virginia give me 1 minute prior to the Senator from Maryland speaking and it not come off the Senator's time?

Mr. BUMPERS. Is a certain time allotted to Senator Moynihan?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from West Virginia yielded me 30 minutes, and I am quite sure I will not take that amount of time. I know there are many wishing to speak. It is one of those cases that Mo Udall described one time: ``Just about everything that needs to be said has been said but everybody has not said it.'' So I am going to add my two cents worth. First of all, the constitutional problems with this bill are insurmountable. The people listening or watching would be interested in knowing, nowhere in the Constitution is the word veto mentioned. Here is what the Framers said in article I of the Constitution: Every bill which shall have passed through the House of Representatives and the Senate shall before it become a law be presented to the President of the United States. If he approve he shall sign it but if not he shall return it with his Objections to the House in which it shall have originated. I have been here 21 years. I am not a constitutional scholar but a country lawyer with a great reverence for the Constitution. I have voted against more constitutional tinkering, I will bet, than any Senator here in the past 21 years. Unhappily, we have Members of this body who think that what Madison and Adams and Franklin did 207 years ago was simply a rough draft for us to finish. This is a classic case of casual tinkering with our Constitution, that sacred document which was put together by the greatest assemblage of minds under one roof in the history of the world. Do you know what else it is? It is a classic political response to an admitted problem. It is a diversion and a distraction of the American people. It tells them, ``Here is a simple answer to spending and deficits.'' Nothing could be further from the truth. But people busy trying to make a living and keeping food in the mouths of their children do not have time to examine the complicated details of this proposal. How did it all start? Where did this idea of a line-item veto originate? I do not know. I had not been here very long when Ronald Reagan was elected President. He had promised to balance the budget, and the first thing you know the deficit was soaring. And 8 years later the national debt had gone from $1 trillion to $3 trillion--tripled in 8 years. I do not want to be hypercritical of President Reagan, but I heard him say time and time again, ``I can't spend a nickel that the Congress doesn't appropriate.'' What he should have been saying is ``The Government cannot spend a dime unless I sign off on it.'' Despite all of that rhetoric and talk about spending and deficits, from 1980 to 1992, the deficit went from $1 to $4 trillion. President Bush never vetoed an appropriations bill, and President Reagan vetoed one spending bill because it was not big enough--a Defense bill. He vetoed it because it did not have enough money in it. President Clinton told my friends on the other side of the aisle, ``You pass that reconciliation bill, and I am going to veto it.'' And they passed it, and he vetoed it. He did not veto it because of the amount of money in it. He vetoed it because of its priorities. But at this very moment, conferees all over this Capitol building are meeting trying to craft a resolution about differences on spending and programs. Frankly, not making much headway. The President wants another $3 billion in education, and that is the sticking point. Let me digress just for a moment on that point and say I saw the most interesting quote yesterday. I think it was the President of Peru who said everything should be subordinate to our children they are just forming their brain cells, their bones, their minds, and bodies, and they do that in a few short years. His point was that if you neglect your children, you have lost a generation of what would otherwise be healthy, productive citizens. I thought that comment was beautiful, appropriate, and absolutely true. So our President is simply saying that for everybody we allow to grow up in ignorance, we all pay a price for it. I do not know whether he is going to get the $3 billion or not. We may have another continuing resolution. I think we will. But my point is this. We are negotiating, and we are talking. If I were to say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, ``Let us just send this bill over to the President and let him pick and choose what he wants to kick out,'' I would start a riot right on the floor of the Senate. Nobody wants to do that. I can remember when this line-item veto thing came up. I did not like it. People would say, ``Well, you were a Governor, weren't you? ``Yes, I was Governor.'' ``Didn't you have a line-item veto?'' ``Yes, I had a line-item veto.'' And I used it occasionally. Do you know what I used it for? To get legislators in line. ``Senator, you know that vo-tech school for your high school in this bill? That sucker is going to be gone unless you get back down there and change your vote.'' That is the way I used it. That is the way a President of the United States would use it. It is a lethal weapon in the hands of the executive branch. Today, at this very moment, the deficit has fallen from a projected $390 billion--that is what it was projected to be. In 1992, we were looking at a 1995 deficit of $390 billion. It is half that amount, and it is already down close to $20 billion from that projection, during just the first 3\1/2\ months of this new fiscal year. And it was not done with a line-item veto. It was done by people who were determined to try to get the budget balanced. Oh, this is a terrible, terrible, lousy idea. It started out as a political diversion for the benefit of a party, to say, ``Oh, wouldn't it be great if the President could just take all that pork out of there?'' I have seen figures to show if the President utilized the line-item veto to its maximum, it would have about a 1 to 2 percent effect on the total budget. It is unneeded, hopelessly unworkable, and an unprecedented grant of power to the President of the United States. And, yes, it is patently unconstitutional. This morning we had a vote. Everybody here knows what it was about. It was about the Utah wilderness bill. Even the people of Utah, apparently, did not think much of that bill. It is very controversial. But the bill tracked almost exactly what President Bush recommended when he was President. Now, if President Bush were sitting in the White House right now and we were voting on cloture, as we did this morning, and the advocates of the Utah wilderness bill needed the nine votes that they did not get this morning, they could go to the White House and the President could call three Republicans and maybe six Democrats and say, ``I have been looking at this bill over here. You know that little old research center you have down in your State? My people tell me they do not much like that. They do not think it is needed. They think it is a waste of money. I am inclined to disagree with my people. But, while I have you on the phone, I am a strong proponent of the Utah wilderness bill. Perhaps you and I could sit down. We could talk this over. Maybe you could see my way on the Utah wilderness bill and perhaps I could see your way on that little research center you have in your State.'' It is not unheard of. I just got through confessing to you that is what I did when I was Governor. I have fought against 12 aircraft carriers; I thought 10 was adequate. I fought against bringing those old moth-eaten battleships out of mothballs at a cost of about $2 billion. Now they are back in mothballs. I fought and have continued to fight against the space station, which will go down in history as the most outrageous waste of money in the history of the U.S. Government. We finally killed the super collider. On every one of those things, the President was on the other side. And we build a multiple launch rocket in Camden, AR. Are you beginning to get the picture? The President might say, ``Well, now, Senator, they tell me you are hot against the space station. I am hot for it. And the Defense Department told me they were thinking about moving the manufacturing of the multiple-launch rockets from Camden, AR, to someplace in Alabama.'' Do you think that does not get my attention, 750 jobs? When James Madison and his colleagues in Philadelphia in 1787 were crafting that document that has given this country the oldest democracy in the history of the world, they said the power of the purse will be vested in Congress. They did not say ``unless the President decides to tinker with the figures.'' They said, ``The Congress shall pass appropriation measures.'' Do you know what they gave us in exchange for that? They said, ``You can spend the money, but you also have to raise it.'' That was supposed to be a nice balance. You have to tax the people. That is not popular. You have to raise the money with taxation before you can spend it, but we are going to give you the power of the purse. What are we doing? We are saying, ``James Madison, you did not know what you were doing. You made a colossal mistake when you crafted our Constitution, so we are going to correct it. We are going to give the President all the powers you gave him in the Constitution, and we are going to take some away from Congress and say you not only have all the executive powers, being Commander in Chief and all those things, we are now going to give you the power of the purse.'' Colleagues, do not, 2 years from now, 3 years from now, come on this floor and start crying about this mistake we are about to make. Oh, I know it is popular. You walk in any diner in America and ask, ``Do you favor the line-item veto?'' You bet. ``Do you favor prayer in school?'' You bet. ``Do you favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution?'' You bet. Count me in. ``Are you against flag burning?'' You bet. All those things that have a great emotional impact on people, until they have heard, as Paul Harvey says, ``the rest of the story.'' We are saying, ``Mr. President, stop us before we spend again. We are out of control, and only you can bring us under control.'' This is not such a good idea for the President, either. Everybody knows President Clinton and I have served our beloved State of Arkansas together for many, many years. He is my friend. But he is for this. I am sick that I did not get a chance to dissuade him before he said that publicly. But he says he is for a line-item veto, and that is a mild disappointment to me. But, you know, Mr. President, if he picks out some projects that are the wrong projects and decides to send them back over here and require us, ultimately, to have a two-thirds vote in both Houses in order to pass, he may get in trouble in some State. So what do you think he is going to do? He did not just fall off a watermelon truck. He did not get elected President by being stupid. He is going to be very careful about what he excises out of the appropriations bills for fear he will lose that State. Right now this Presidential race is heating up. Do you think a President is going to take anything big out of a bill in an election year? In an off year, when he is not running for President, he might pick out a couple of Senators he does not like, who have been particularly obstreperous and have fought against some of his programs, and in a year when he is not up for reelection, he may decide to take some of those projects out of the States of Senators of the other party. Bear in mind, when we first started talking about term limits, it swept this country like a prairie fire. It is a terrible idea, a lousy idea. I have never been for it and will never be for it. Virtually every Member of this body on the other side of the aisle thought it was wonderful until they got control of Congress, and now you cannot even get it up for a vote. We kept people's attention diverted just long enough, and the Republicans took control of Congress, and now it is not worth the cost of electricity to have a roll call on term limits. It would be defeated soundly. And when it comes to the line-item veto, they wanted a line- item veto so desperately--in all fairness 19 Democrats voted for this thing, too. What was it about? Take the heat off Ronald Reagan. That is really where it all started. Then, suddenly, the contract, the famous Contract With America, over in the House of Representatives, it was put in the contract: line-item veto. Not many people in America knew it. Not many people in America cared. So we passed it. How long did it take after Bill Clinton got elected President--something nobody anticipated--we could not even get conferees appointed. Do you know what the bill now says? It will not go into effect until January 1997, with the ardent, divine hope that Bob Dole will be President January 1, 1997. Those are the shenanigans that are going on with our sacred Constitution. Mr. President, another thing that those great minds in Philadelphia did almost 209 years ago is they provided a third branch of Government called the judicial branch. They set up a Supreme Court and such lower courts as Congress may establish. They are independent, and they are named for life. You cannot threaten them. An article in New York Times this morning describes a letter from the Federal judges vigorously opposing this, because if a Federal court renders a decision the President does not like, the next time around, he can just take their money away from them. He cannot take their salaries because you cannot reduce their compensation as long as they are sitting on the Court. You can take their clerks and secretaries away from them; you can cut the air-conditioning off. To give the President that kind of authority over the independent judiciary is the height of irresponsibility. We not only have an independent judiciary, we just, fortunately, had a very wise man named John Marshall who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when the Marbury versus Madison case was argued. John Marshall said: ``Somebody has to decide: Are those laws they're passing over there in conformance with this Constitution or not?'' So was born the doctrine of judicial review. Thank God for John Marshall and judicial review and a truly independent judiciary. So, Mr. President, this bill gives the President a legislative authority to amend bills. He can literally amend our bills. I am terribly uncomfortable knowing this bill is going to sail through here with a big majority, but I am comforted in the fact that I believe the independent judiciary that was set up to stop such foolishness as this will, indeed, do so. So I repose my trust in the Supreme Court of the United States on this issue. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. I defer to our leader there, Senator Byrd, with how to approach this.

Mr. BUMPERS. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for a very powerful, cogent statement. No. 2, I want to say to my colleagues that, if by some chance the Supreme Court does not rule this unconstitutional, you will never be able to take this power back. Thirty-four Senators can keep you from ever taking this power back. It will be gone forever. When the Framers assembled in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in 1787, the one thing they knew above everything else was they had had all the kings they wanted. They wanted no more kings. And they succeeded admirably. We have had 43 Presidents and no kings--until now. We are doing our very best to transfer kingly powers to the President of the United States. I thank the Senator for yielding. Mr. SARBANES addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I wonder if the floor manager would be willing to enter into a unanimous-consent agreement specifically naming the order of those who were here on the floor so others will know approximately when to come to the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. I suggest that Senator Roth be recognized next, following which Senator Daschle be recognized.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I want to echo what our distinguished minority leader has said. There are over 50 pieces of parks or public lands legislation in the bill on which we just refused to invoke cloture. I have two pieces of legislation in that package that are very important to me. I received no pleasure in voting against cloture and knowing that I have to start all over again moving those two bills. I do not mind telling you this is a lousy way to legislate. It is like hanging a Damocles sword over your head by saying, ``If you will vote for these 52 goodies, you are going to have to choke this bad one down too''; 49 Senators said they were not willing to do that. They are all good pieces of legislation. If we want to sit here and talk about who had holds on those bills over the past few months, or the minimum wage bill, that is fine. However, that does not solve anything. As the minority leader stated, within 30 seconds we can pass more than 50 bills, 100 to zip, by simply removing the Utah wilderness bill. Having said that, let me also say these things are no fun. Nobody has more respect for the two Senators from Utah than I do. Senator Bennett and I have worked together for endless hours trying to reform the concessions policies of the National Park System. Therefore, it is not easy for me to filibuster and require a cloture vote on something that is so important to the Senators from Utah. But there are times, regardless of how close a friend you may be and how much respect you may have for another Senator, that you have to stand up for something you really feel is critically important. Perhaps the majority leader and the minority leader could sit down with the Senator from Alaska, who is chairman of our committee, and with Secretary Babbitt.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. BUMPERS. And come back to this floor and do something very responsible that would be very pleasing to the people of this country. If the people of our country saw the Democrats and the Republicans joining hands, to pass more than 50 pieces of legislation in a bipartisan spirit, everyone in America would applaud. I promise you it would lift the morale of the country ever so slightly. We ought to do it, and we certainly ought to do it before we check out of here tonight. I want to sit down with the two Senators from Utah. As I have suggested, perhaps the majority and minority leaders can participate along with the chairman and ranking member of the Energy Committee, and Secretary Babbitt and work on the Utah wilderness bill. I would like to get that contentious item off of the calendar.

Mr. BUMPERS. People operating in good faith around here can do it. I am very pleased with the outcome of the cloture vote. I want my colleagues from Utah to know they are my friends. I hope we can work something out with regards to this legislation. I yield the floor. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, notwithstanding the unanimous-consent agreement, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for 2 minutes on the cloture vote.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. I am quite sure we will not use our all of our time, either. We will be happy to yield the balance of such time. I only know of two people on this side, Senator Jeffords and I, who will be speaking.

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. President, the Senator from Montana a moment ago discussed a large grazing association, individual ranchers, and he said that they would be considered somebody who had more than 2,000 AUM's. Senator, our bill specifically--specifically--takes care of that. Your association in Montana would be judged according to the AUM's of each individual member, not the association. No. 2, my good friend from Utah, and I have utmost respect for him, began his statement by saying that we talk about this amendment producing millions and billions in balancing the budget. I have said time and time again the amount of money in this would not wet a whistle. If my amendment passed, it might accidentally produce up to $13 million a year. But, Senator, I have also said the issue here is not money except in the context of fairness. It is not fair for us to have a law on the books under the guise of helping small ranchers make a living out West, and allowing the biggest corporations in America to slurp up that land and deprive the very people you say you want to defend from grazing permits. That is the ultimate fairness we are talking about. That is all that my amendment does. My amendment affects less--repeat, less--than 10 percent of the 22,000 permittees in this country. Who are they? Need I repeat it? The biggest corporations in America, slurping up the lands that ought to be used by your small ranchers who need the land, who could make a living on it. Class warfare? Somebody used that term a moment ago. How foolish can you get? We are not talking about class warfare. We are talking about a basic, elemental fairness. Some day these issues are going to catch on with the American public. Right now, the American public does not have a clue about grazing fees. I might say they are beginning to hone in on these mining claims. That is getting to be a topic across the country. It has only taken 7 years to raise the voters' awareness slightly on that issue. Not one single State except Nevada will suffer a raise in rates for more than 10 percent of the permittees in that State. Montana and the Dakotas all combined, only 2 percent of their permittees. I hope that the Senators from Montana and from the Dakotas certainly would vote for my amendment because they would never know it passed out there. Let me just say, Senator Jeffords and I may not prevail, but it will be sort of like my fights with Betty Bumpers. Those I win are just not over. I plead with my colleagues to think very seriously about whether you want to go home, and on those rare occasions when somebody says, ``Senator, how did you vote on the grazing fee bill,'' you will have a good answer. If you vote against this amendment, you are going to have some tall explaining to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, Karl Hess, Jr., a senior fellow at the Cato Institute--that is not exactly the citadel of liberalism down here--says: Domenici's bill is bad for ranchers, bad for public lands, and bad for the American taxpayer. It will not improve management of public lands and it will not be a fix for the hard economic times now faced by ranchers. What it will do, however, is deepen the fiscal crisis of the public land grazing program by plunging it into an ever-deepening deficit. If western ranchers insist on supporting this bill and the additional costs associated with it, they should be prepared to pay the price.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield to my distinguished colleague, Senator Jeffords, 2 minutes.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, the Senator from Idaho raised a question about timber. I do not understand the relevance of it. We do set aside timber for small business people. Even so, timber is sold on a competitive basis. If you want to start leasing 270 million acres of public rangelands for grazing on a competitive basis, I may or may not vote for that, but we do not do that. Do you know how you get a permit? You have to own land. Hewlett-Packard may own 400 acres of land, which they have to do in order to be eligible for a permit. If they have a 400-acre ranch that they own themselves, they can run cattle on 100,000 acres of Federal land. I am telling you something else. You could not pry these permits from permittees with a wedge. They literally hand these permits down from generation to generation. Under the current regulations, the term of a permit is 12 years. The Senator from New Mexico, his bill originally considered 15 years--is it 15 or 12 now?

Mr. BUMPERS. Twelve years is a long time. You cannot compare timber sales, which are let competitively, to a permit which you give some corporation like Anheuser-Busch or Hewlett-Packard, simply because they own a few hundred acres in their own right, give them 50,000 to 100,000 acres to raise cattle on for $1.35 a month per cow. Everybody here knows what this is--corporate welfare, pure and simple, just like the Market Promotion Program where we give McDonald's money to advertise the Big Mac in Moscow. That is more of the same. Here we are trying to make just a small dent and say that these big corporations who own 60 percent of this 270 million acres pay at least what the State would charge you if you were renting lands from the State. Why is it that the Government only receives $1.35, and that is way under what any State in the Nation charges for the same thing? It is politics. It is corporate welfare. And it is grossly unfair. I plead with my colleagues to come in here and search their consciences about whether this is right or wrong. Should we allow this practice to continue? As I say, these things are so patently unfair. They never go away, Senators. They never go away. Let us address it now. If my amendment is not perfect, we will go to conference and make it perfect. My fee is actually less than the fee of the Senator from New Mexico in the year 2005. We are not talking about what we are charging the small ranchers; we are talking about what Hewlett-Packard, Newmont Mining, Anheuser-Busch, and the biggest corporations in America ought to pay.

Mr. BUMPERS. Not at all.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may use. First, I want to point out that while this is commonly referred to as a western issue, it is also a national issue. The 270 million acres of land that people control to graze cattle in the United States belong to the taxpayers of America. The public land may be located in Wyoming. It may also be located in Wyoming, Idaho, or Nevada. However, it is owned by the taxpayers. And 100 United States Senators have a solemn duty to protect the taxpayers' interests. Unhappily, these so-called ``western issues'' somehow or other fall into the category of what my mother used to say as ``Everybody's business is nobody's business.'' Unless you have a significant number of grazing permits in your State, you do not immerse yourself into these kind of issues. Why am I involved in it? No. 1, I sit on the committee from whence the Domenici bill was reported out. No. 2, I am an unabashed environmentalist and I am concerned about the conditions of the rangeland. Third, and above all, I am totally committed to fairness. Yesterday afternoon, speaking on this amendment, I pointed out that when I first discovered that the U.S. Government was selling its land for $2.50 an acre for miners to mine gold and silver, I was utterly awestruck and did not believe it. I found out that it was indeed true. That law is still on the books. The mining law was originally intended to encourage people to go west and help small mom- and pop-mining operations succeed. As I delved into the mining law, I discovered that it ain't mom and pop at all. Who is it? Who is mining the billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium off of Federal lands? It ``ain't'' mom and pop. It is Bannister Resources, the biggest gold company in the world, who bought the gold for $2.50 an acre. They are still doing it. It is Newmont Mining Co., one of the biggest gold producers in the world. It is Crown Butte, and the list goes on. It is not mom and pop. It is the biggest corporations--not in America but in the world--who are mining not only gold but mining the U.S. Treasury which also happens to belong to the taxpayers of America. So when I began studying the grazing issue I found that, No. 1, the amount of money involved is infinitesimal. It is about $2 billion worth of gold that is being mined off Federal land every year, for which we do not get a dime--$2 billion worth. All of the 22,000 grazing permits in this Nation only produce $25 million. I would be willing to forsake all of the grazing fees except for just the element of fairness. It is not that much money. But it is not fair. So what is my amendment about? I invite you to look at a chart. We permit our public rangelands to people on the basis of what we call an AUM. That is an ``animal unit month.'' Right now we receive $1.35 per AUM for every cow, or horse, or five sheep that graze on Federal lands under these permits. The fee was $1.85 in 1986. It is $1.35 now. So who are these people that have the permits--these little mom and pop ranchers you have been hearing about? Here they are. Here are the 91 percent of the small ranchers my colleagues on the other side say they want to protect. Count me in, Mr. President. I do, too. My amendment would cost less by the year 2005 than the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico would cost, so do not talk to me about who is being fair to small ranchers. These 91 percent of the permittees control only 40 percent of the animal unit months. They are not hurt under my amendment. They should have no squawk at all. Do not shed any tears for them because of my amendment. What else does my amendment do? Look at the right-hand side of that chart. Mr. President, 60 percent--60 percent--of the animal unit months are held by this 9 percent. Nine percent of the permittees own 60 percent of the AUM's. If you want to think of it in pure terms of acreage, 2 percent of the permittees own 50 percent of the 270 million acres. Is that fair? You say yes. Let me add something else to the equation then. Who is that 9 percent of the permittees? There they are. This is just a smattering, just a small list. Anheuser-Busch, the 80th biggest corporation in America. In 1994, they were on Forbes list as the 80th. Anheuser-Busch has 4 permits controlling more than 8,000 AUM's. My amendment only raises the fees on people who have more than 2,000 AUM's. Yes, my amendment would affect Anheuser-Busch. My amendment would affect Newmont Mining Co,, the biggest gold company in this country. Newmont Mining Co. controls 12,000 AUM's. Small mom and pop operation. Poor little old rancher out there struggling to survive. Biggest gold company in the United States. Who else? Hewlett-Packard. Maybe you have one of their computers in your home. Poor little old rancher Hewlett-Packard, we have got to protect them. Hewlett-Packard runs cattle on only 100,000 acres of public rangelands. They run cattle on those public rangelands because those lands adjoin their ranch. What are we doing here? It is sickening. Here is a man--one Senator rose in the Chamber yesterday and said he is a wonderful man, a very engaging person, a good citizen. I do not know him. I am sure people who know him like him a lot--an 85-year-old billionaire, not a small mom and pop rancher, a billionaire, J.R. Simplot, from the State of Idaho. What does he have? Well, he is not all that big. He only has 50,000 AUM's. Mom and pop rancher? Here is a Japanese company. They control 6,000 AUM's on 40,000 acres. You look at those. The list goes on and on. I have another list here. I am not going to bore you with all of them. The biggest corporations of the United States of America mining the U.S. Treasury, and who can blame them as long as they know this body is not going to do anything about it. A Senator who is no longer here, a Republican Senator, whom I admired very much, when I first took on the mining issue I walked over to him, and I said, ``I need a Republican colleague to cosponsor this bill if we are going to change the mining laws of this country.'' I explained to him how the Department of the Interior actually issued deeds to people for $2.50 an acre that had billions of dollars worth of gold under it. I said, ``All you have to do is put up 4 stakes for every acre you want to claim. If you find gold underneath, it is yours for $2.50 an acre. How about joining me in this crusade?'' He said, ``I'd like to, but I think I will go to Nevada and start staking claims.'' At least he was honest about it. He was being facetious, of course, All we are saying in our amendment is that Anheuser-Busch and Hewlett-Packard and people like that are going to have to pay an average of what you would pay if you were renting State lands. The States cannot afford to give away the public domain like we do. They do not own the public domain. They own some land. The State of Arkansas owns some of its lands. Your respective States own some of the lands there, too. If those little mom and pop operators go to the State of Montana or the State of Wyoming and say, ``I would like to lease some of this land for $1.35,'' they would laugh them out of the State capital building. The Senator from Colorado just left the floor. You want a permit in Colorado? Not for $1.35 per AUM but $6.50. They are not stupid. Do you know what else? There is a line of people waiting for a permit in Colorado. Then look at Wyoming. Go into Cheyenne and say, ``I would like a permit on some State lands to graze some cattle.'' No. 1, they would say, ``We are sorry; we do not have any land at the moment, but if we did it would cost you $3.50 an AUM,'' not $1.35 like ``Uncle Sucker'' gets. And in Montana, the home of my distinguished good friend across the floor, $4.05. Our amendment says to that 9 percent, mostly America's biggest corporations, we would rather you leave the land and make it available to small people to make a living, but if you insist on keeping it, we want you to at least pay the weighted average for permits that the State lets in the State where your land is located. Who can quarrel about that? Mr. President, I will close by just simply saying two things. You know who my amendment affects? Ten percent, 10 percent of the permittees, and they are the biggies. Only one State, Nevada, would have more than 10 percent of its permittees covered by my amendment. I did not know until I looked this over. For the interest of my colleagues who may or may not be in the Chamber but who I hope are listening, here is how your State would be affected: Arizona, 10 percent; California, 8 percent; Colorado, 5 percent; Idaho, 7 percent; Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, 2 percent; Nevada, 39 percent; New Mexico, 10 percent; Oregon, Washington, 8 percent; Utah, 10 percent; Wyoming, 9 percent. Is it any wonder people think campaign contributions play a role in what happens around here? There is no justification for allowing this to happen. Since 1981, the grazing fee for cattle grazing on private lands has gone from $7.88 to $11.20 per AUM. The fee on State lands has increased from $3.22 to $5.58, and Federal grazing fees in real dollars have gone from $2.31 to $1.61, to this year's $1.35. I say to my colleagues, I would like to appeal not only to your sense of fairness but to your sense of compassion. At a time when 100 Senators committed to a balanced budget and we are cutting education, we are cutting environmental funds and housing funds and school lunches and Medicaid and Medicare, and everything that is necessary to give people at least a fighting chance at a piece of the action, a piece of the rock, we allow things like this to go on. It is unconscionable. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be granted 30 seconds.

Mr. BUMPERS. Senator, I want to apologize for that remark. I am sorry. There is a certain personal thing in that, and I regret it. I regret I said it. I am sorry.

Mr. BUMPERS. I do not have a schedule in mind. I do not have a certain length of time that I am going to speak. I will yield myself such time as I will use.