Dale Bumpers

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. BUMPERS. I yield back 4 minutes of that.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, if what the Senator from Idaho just said were true, I would be voting with him. He said the ``fair market value.'' He did not say the fair market value of a surface. There are several billion dollars difference between what he is offering and what the taxpayers of this country have a right to expect. His amendment says fair market value of the surface. Well, on $50 billion of the gold, $30 billion, or whatever it is underneath the land, you do not get that at fair market value. You get that free. That comes free. His amendment gives you the surface, which is worth about $100 an acre, and with it comes the largess of anywhere from $15 billion to $30 billion from Uncle Sam and the taxpayers of America. Do not be diluted by that fair market value language.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I move to table the amendment of the Senator from Idaho and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--I have no objection.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I promise you, this is a fairly narrow issue. This is not mining law reform. I promise you, while I will not unduly delay it, I would like to make my opening argument and see how much time we use, and we can use that as a judge as to how much time it will take.

Mr. BUMPERS. I will be happy to.

Mr. BUMPERS. Once his amendment is disposed of, then my amendment will be pending; is that correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Let me rephrase it. The second degree amendment of the Senator from Idaho to my amendment is pending.

Mr. BUMPERS. I have no further amendments. As I understand it, Mr. President, the parliamentary situation is that my amendment is pending; is that not correct?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent there be 30 minutes equally divided on the Craig amendment.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, was my request to stop reading the amendment granted?

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, were the yeas and nays ordered?

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, he cannot object to the request for a quorum call.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. BUMPERS. The underlying committee amendment. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, can we have the amendment read?

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

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, I move to table the underlying amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I am agreeable to that, and I think that is almost automatic anyway, because if the Craig amendment prevails, then that becomes my amendment and so we could voice vote it. I wonder if the Senator from Nevada is now willing to enter into a time agreement on the Craig amendment.

Mr. BUMPERS. Madam President, in a sense, I hate to stand here and make this argument. This is the eighth consecutive year that I have tried to bring some sanity and reason to an 1872 law which can only be described not as an anachronism, but a scandalous anachronism. People who do not understand this issue can be easily deceived by what we are talking about. But here [[Page S 11867]] are the simple, basic facts. I have called a few of the freshman Senators, and it is very difficult for anybody to believe that the practice I am trying to stop is actually going on. In 1872, Ulysses Grant signed the 1872 Mining Law. Under that bill, people were encouraged to go west and settle. The West was still pretty wild. And Congress said, essentially, if you will move out to the West, we will let you file claims for hard rock minerals in 20-acre increments. You put down four stakes anywhere you want for 20 acres, and put down as many as you want. If you want 100 acres, put down claims on five 20-acre tracts. If you want 500 acres, put down 25 20- acre plots. And today, 124 years after Ulysses Grant signed the bill, it is still law. Do not everybody bolt for the door to rush out west and file claims. But if you want to, you can. You just find yourself any one of the 550 million acres of land that the Federal Government still has open for mining and you put your stakes down, and it is yours. You have to pay $100 a year if you have more than 25 claims. If you do not, you do not pay anything. But here is the real kicker: If you find any hard rock minerals-- gold, silver, palladium, platinum--if you can convince the Bureau of Land Management that you have any of those hard rock minerals in commercial quantities under this land, you can demand a deed. You say, I want a deed to this 500 acres. You know something else? They cannot refuse you. They have to give you a deed to it. So in the last 124 years, we have given away more than 3.2 million acres. That is acreage the size of the State of Connecticut. For how much? Mr. President, $2.50 an acre. Sometimes, $5 an acre. That is the maximum. In that same period of time, $241 billion worth of minerals have been taken off that land. And what do you think ``Uncle Sucker'' got? He got somewhere between $30 billion and $70 billion in reclamation costs to clean up the thousands of mining sites that are abandoned and, you guessed it, not a dime in royalties. The taxpayers of this country gave away 3.2 million acres of land for $2.50 an acre. The mining companies took $241 billion worth of gold and silver, and we got the shaft. Now, every time I tell that story to somebody, they say you know that could not be true. I have heard a lot about corporate welfare. But I have never heard anything even approaching this. Madam President, do you know what else? Once you get a deed, you do not even have to mine it. Do you know what you can do with it? You can sell it to somebody for a ski resort. You can sell it to somebody to build condominiums on. It is yours, you have a deed to it. Do you know something else? Every time we give somebody a deed to that land, that means it is theirs, and we can never again charge them a royalty on the land. What is it about the mining companies that gives them such a stranglehold over this body? Last year, for the first time, the Interior Appropriations Conference finally included a moratorium and said, no more, do not process any more patent applications. We grandfathered-in 393 patent applications that were pending. But at least that was a step in the right direction. For the first time in history, Congress agreed to put a moratorium and say no more patents. This year, I am saying let us renew it, let us put this moratorium on this year and next year, until we get some kind of reform law through here. Last year Senator Johnston from Louisiana, the chairman of the Energy Committee, negotiated for 18 months--really 2 years --with everybody in sight, to try to reach a deal on reform. He gave, he compromised, he conciliated, he did everything in the world to try to accommodate everybody's concern, but to pass a law that had some sense of sanity to it. Let me ask every Member of this body, do you think it is fair for a new mining company to pay an 18 percent royalty on their lands in Nevada? And a few miles away mine gold off Federal lands and not pay one red cent? And then argue that if they had to pay a royalty on Federal lands the mining companies will all go broke and everybody will be without a job? If they mine on private lands, they are happy to pay a royalty of 18 percent, and they go like gangbusters. But if you even suggest charging them a royalty on Federal lands, or that they not be allowed to mine in every national park and wilderness area in the United States, they go broke. Why is it that the mining companies have such a stranglehold on this body? If you want to mine coal on Federal land, that is fine, but you pay ``Uncle Sugar'' a 12.5 percent royalty if you take coal off the taxpayers' land. On underground mines, some of them a mile deep, think of the cost of extracting coal from a mile down. They pay an 8 percent royalty. No questions asked. You pay it, or you do not mine. Natural gas, 12.5 percent. Oil 12.5 percent. Goal, silver, platinum, palladium, all the rest of them, zero. What is the difference? Why is that? Mr. President, you need not look any further than the 1872 Mining Law. Since the Senate first defeated the patent moratorium in the fiscal year 1991 appropriations bill, we have had 468 patent applications covering 159,000 acres, 346 first-half final certificates have been granted; 79 patents granted covering 11,365 acres; the taxpayers have received the handsome sum, for all those patents--``Uncle Sugar's'' taxpayers have received the magnificent sum of $56,000, and we have given away on those lands $11 billion worth of gold, silver, platinum and palladium, and we received not one red cent in royalties. Madam President, this amendment is the same one that the Interior Appropriations Conference unanimously agreed-to last year. We do not disturb the 393 patent applications that we grandfathered-in last year. But there are 233 more that are subject to the moratorium. If my amendment fails, Madam President, listen to this, all you people who are voting to cut Medicare, Medicaid, school lunches, earned income tax credits, National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, Public Broadcasting, and all you people voting to eliminate those things or cut them very severely, you vote against my amendment and you are giving away $11 billion to the biggest corporations in America. Go home and defend that one. It must not be tough. I have been working on mining law reform for 7 years now. All the news magazines have done a segment on this outrageous law. One Senator called me after a particularly harsh show on ``Prime Time Live'' and said, ``For God's sakes put me on as a cosponsor.'' Two months later when we voted, he voted against it. He said his phone was ringing off the wall, and well it should be. We have the opportunity here to give away $15.5 billion in minerals that belong to the taxpayers of this country, while we are trying to balance the budget by the year 2002, and cutting dramatically the most vulnerable people in America, and giving $15.5 billion to the biggest corporations in America. Last year, Madam President, on May 16, 1994, the Secretary of the Interior was forced to give a Canadian corporation--not even an American corporation--a deed to 1,800 acres of land for the princely sum of $9,000. That 1,800 acres had 11 billion dollars' worth of gold under it. People who may be listening to this say two things: No. 1, you know he is embellishing that, that could not possibly be true. As bad as it is, the Government would never do a thing like that. Then they will hear people get up and answer this. They say, ``We have offered to pay fair market value.'' Really? For what? ``For the surface.'' Oh, the surface. ``You are willing to pay fair market value for the surface?'' ``Yes, sir.'' On that 1,800 acres, the fair market value is about $100 an acre, and it has 11 billion dollars' worth of gold under it. Do not fall for that fair market value argument. I will give you 100 times more than fair market value. Bring me a deed and I will pay you right now, give you 100 times more than the fair market value of the surface. We are not talking about surface. We are talking about what is under the surface. The Stillwater Mining Co. is owned by Chevron Resources and the Manville Corp., a couple of local paupers. This mine is located in the Custer and Gallatin National Forest in Montana, 35 miles north of Yellowstone. In 1990, I came within two votes of getting a moratorium exactly like the [[Page S 11868]] one I am proposing today. I came within two votes in 1990 of getting that moratorium put on. Four days later, the Stillwater Mining Co. filed an application for patents on 2,036 acres--scared to death because I came within two votes of stopping these outrageous practices. Do you know what is under that 2,036 acres? This is their figure, not mine--this is what they say--225 million ounces of platinum and palladium worth $38 billion. For the princely sum of $5 an acre, Stillwater will pay to Uncle Sugar, a total of $10,180, and we will deed the Stillwater Mining Co. 225 million ounces of palladium and platinum worth $38 billion. I do not know how you explain this to your constituents. You do not, because it never comes up. My father used to say: ``Everybody's business is nobody's business,'' and this is where it comes in. Very few people outside the roughly 11 Western States even know about the issue. This is not an antiwestern issue. It is not antianything. It is simple justice for the taxpayers of this country. A family in Oregon got a deed under this process for 780 acres of land of sand--believe this--sand. They wanted the sand, so they bought it for $1,950, 780 acres of sand. Guess where it was? It was in the National Dunes Recreation area of Oregon, and they paid $1,950 for it. There was a hue and cry about selling this sand in a national recreation area. So we started negotiating to get it back. The family had paid $1,950 for the land. What do you think they want for it back, Senator? Somewhere between $11 million and $12 million. Now, this is not only not collecting royalty, this is having to give somebody $11 million to $12 million back because we should not have sold it to them in the first place. In 1983, a speculator demanded a deed for 160 acres of Forest Service land near the Keystone Ski Resort. He got it for $400. He sold 44 acres for $500,000. I do not know why anybody stays in the Senate. We ought to be all out West with our pickaxes. If you do not have a pickax, just send your application in. In 1987, while DOE was examining Yucca Mountain as a possible nuclear waste site, a man went in and filed for 27 claims for $135, and DOE paid him $249,000, almost immediately, for the land. We gave him the land for $400 and turned right around and paid him back $249,500. Have you had enough? I will give you one more. In 1987 the Government sold land just outside the city of Phoenix to a miner for $2.50 an acre, and 10 years later, 10 years later he sold the land to a resort developer for $400,000 plus an 11 percent interest in the resort. When I first started discussing this subject, a Senator on the other side, a man who is not here anymore, a fine Senator, a man I respected greatly and I thought if there was anyone over there who would like to join me on this, he would be it, I gave him the pitch you just heard me give, ``How about joining with me as a sponsor?" He said, ``No, I am heading for Nevada so I can file a claim.'' I applauded his honesty. Mr. President, I wish every Member of the body were here because I would really like to see 100 Senators sitting in their seats and ask this question: How many times have you told the Chamber of Commerce about how terrible the deficit is? How many times have you told them you are going to do everything you can to get the deficit down? How many times have you told them and the Rotary club, ``I will treat your money like it were my own"? Really? I used to own a farm. I sold it about a year ago and it broke my heart. I suddenly realized I was not going to build that dream home overlooking the lake on my farm. I never made any money. Made enough to pay the taxes and keep the fences up, but I loved it. And under that farm was some natural gas. If somebody had come to me and said, ``Senator Bumpers, we are going to set up a well over here; we are going to take this gas out from under your land.'' ``Now wait, just a minute.'' ``No. The Government gave us a deed to it, so we want to set up shop here and we are going to take your gas.'' What would you say, Senator? If you had a 12-gauge handy, you would order them off your land. Do you know what the landowner out in Nevada said to Newmont Mining Company? ``Sure, come in here and mine this gold. Just give us 18 percent of anything you sell it for.'' I do not want to belabor this. I want to talk about it long enough that people have some semblance of an idea of what an outrageous scandal it is to continue giving away the Federal domain for $2.50 an acre. Three years ago, in talking about this, some of the Senators from the West said they would consider paying a 3 percent royalty on the net profits. I had always held out for 8 percent of the gross income, or a net smelter return, which is the common practice for royalties on private land. Eight percent probably--certainly not in this climate--is not realistic. At the time we discussed this 3 years ago, when the industry said a royalty would bankrupt them, gold was $333 an ounce. Today it is exactly $50 higher than that, $383 an ounce. Platinum has gone from $354 to $422, $68 dollars more per ounce than it was at the beginning of the 103rd Congress. But today--you see, they could have paid an 8 percent gross royalty and just think how much more they would still have than they had then. But today you suggest a 3 or 4 percent royalty: ``Oh, it will bankrupt us. It will put us out of business.'' Let me refresh your memory on what this amendment does and what it does not do. You make up your own mind. If you want to go home and defend this, be my guest. All I ask of you is just be honest when you are defending it. My amendment reinstates the moratorium against the Interior Department processing any new patent applications. Bear in mind, there are 393 patent applications that were grandfathered-in last year. When the Conference agreed to this, I knew that mining law reform would not be enacted. The Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Johnston] worked his heart out last year to try to enact reform. And at the last minute, when everybody knew it was too late--``Sorry, we just do not have time to do it this year.'' All I am trying to do is reinstate exactly what we did last year, put a moratorium on patenting, let the 393 applicants go forward. But for God's sake, do not add any more. And finally, on a more pathetic note, I have always admitted to be a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I have stood behind that desk and shouted to the rooftops, just as I have tonight, trying to warn people about what the deficits are doing to this Nation, and it often fell on deaf ears. Let me ask you this. If you can explain to people why you are going to do this, also explain to them how you had to cut education by 30 percent over the next 7 years. Explain to them why you had to cut Medicare by $270 billion. Explain to them why you had to cut Medicaid $170 billion. Explain to them why you had to cut Earned Income Tax Credits, the best program the Nation ever had to keep people off welfare. Explain to them why the only civilized thing their children get a chance to see is on PBS, and they want to torpedo that--cannot afford it. Explain to them why you want to cut the Endowment for the Humanities, which trains 3,500 teachers every year in civilized conduct, and they go back home and they pass their lessons, what they learned, on to 500,000 students--you have to cut that out. The National Endowment for the Arts--it is not all pornography, you know. It is ``The Civil War,'' it is ``Baseball,'' it is the Arkansas Symphony--we have to cut all those things out. At the same time Senators, go home to your constituents and try to explain how you voted to continue to give away public land and billions of dollars worth of minerals. Houdini could not perform that trick and get away with it. I yield the floor.

Mr. BUMPERS

Mr. BUMPERS. Not until I finish this statement. This chart demonstrates what we spend for defense in comparison to our eight or nine most likely adversaries, Russia, China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Cuba--name somebody else. I do not care who you name. Our defense budget is twice as big as all nine of them put together. If you add NATO, twice as much as the rest of the world. What are the proponents of the bill we are considering today proposing? That we add $7 billion to the defense budget. We get so hairy chested around here when defense comes up. Everybody favors a strong defense. Nobody wants to ever be vulnerable. This is what you call piling on. You just cannot pile on enough money. Even the Pentagon is trying to shovel it back to us, and we will not take it. I appreciate the Defense Department. When we have a crisis, I am glad we have aircraft carriers. I am glad we have all the sophisticated weaponry. All I am saying is, there ought to be some kind of balance, because it is not going to make any difference how much we spend on defense if we are not careful about what we are doing back home. Mr. President, I saw a poll of high school seniors about 5 years ago. Who are your heroes? About the only one I can remember is Tom Cruise. I think Mr. T was on the list. It was a list of rock stars. Michael Jackson was high on the list. That is who the high school seniors revere in this country. Mother Theresa did not make it. The Pope did not make it. Poor old George Bush did not make it. Not even mom and pop. Senators, can you imagine somebody asking you that question when you were in high school, who were your heroes? I would have popped out my father so fast it would make your head swim. You talk about a hero. I worshipped the ground he walked on. Mom and pop did not make this list. If we keep going the way we have gone this year in the U.S. Congress, Tim McVeigh and David Koresh will be on the list next year. I am not trying to take the money away from the Pentagon with this amendment. I am simply saying the people of this body ought to be more thoughtful about where the real strengths of the Nation are. We ought to be more thoughtful about people who have not had the luck we have had. I know a woman who is very wealthy and she is always saying, ``Can't everybody be rich and beautiful like me?'' The truth of the matter is, most people who have made it, and especially if you come from a town during the Depression with a population of 851, have had a lot of help. I did not become a Senator just because I am such a great person. I tell you why I did it. I did it because this same Congress, back when they were a little more sensitive about things like this, gave me a free education. That is right. My brother went to Harvard. I went to Northwestern. My father was a poor man. He could no more have afforded that than he could fly to the Moon. I was fortunate and received a little Government help after World War II, and had a teacher who taught me to speak and read well, did something for my self-esteem. The main thing I did, and what most people that make it did, is choose my parents well. Mr. President, I just want to say I am not trying to move money out of the Defense Department into any of these other programs. I am saying as a psychological thing we ought not to be sitting here and saying you cannot touch defense for anything, no matter how critical it may be. If we continue the way we have started this year, and especially that Contract With America, this country is in for a terrible shock. That is not what the people were voting for, they wanted change, but this is not the change they were voting for, I do not think. When they begin to feel the pain, they are going to begin to wonder what they voted for. I am telling you, if we keep going the way we are going now, trying to tinker with the Constitution, spending every extra dime we can get our hands on on defense, that age of know-nothingism back in the middle of the 19th century will be known as the age of enlightenment. As you know I have such a reverence for the freedom of religion in this country, but there is a great quote of Isaiah, admonishing the Israelites when they got sort of cynical about all their people. He said to them: Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Maybe that is just good for the Senate prayer breakfast or on Sunday morning. It does not seem to be terribly relevant here. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. BUMPERS. Will you kindly notify me when I have used a total of 20 minutes. Mr. President, here is a chart which shows what is going to happen from 1995 to the year 2002, in defense. We go from $264 billion in 1995 to $280 billion in 2002. What do we do with everything else--what is known as domestic discretionary spending--education, health care, you name it, medical research, law enforcement? What happens to that? It goes from $241 to $218 billion over 7 years. Of the spending cuts that are projected to be made over the next 7 years to reduce the deficit and pay for the Republican tax cut for the wealthy, domestic spending, the things that make us great will absorb 43 percent of all the cuts. What in the name of God are we thinking about? We will spend $400 billion more for defense spending than domestic programs over the next 7 years. Mr. President, $400 billion less to take care of the real needs of the people of this country, that we are going to spend on defense. How much are we spending on defense? Are we looking for two wars, as the Bottom-Up Review said?