Conrad Burns

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. No.

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 5 minutes. And I daresay I would not use that much time.

Mr. BURNS. I will agree to that. I thank my friend.

Mr. BURNS. That is correct.

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. I thank my colleague from Montana. I thank him for presenting a bare-bones amendment covering the emergency agricultural situation we have in our State. He is exactly right. There are a lot of folks who do not realize how big agriculture is in our overall economy. You know, it is not surprising because each and every one of us in this country goes about our way feeding and clothing ourselves. Everyone plays a part. It may not be in the area of production, but it could be in the area of transportation, or processing, advertising, presenting, or the marketing of food products. I don't think there is a country like ours in the world that has the advantage of eating fresh fruits and vegetables all through the year, even though you may live in the northeastern part of the country where it is snowing and blowing. So it is a marvelous system, a system that is held high as an example around the world. When this subject was first offered last fall, it was pretty well loaded up. I think we tried to boil the fat out of it and offer some assistance to some people who have been impacted. We are going into our fourth year of drought. There are many in this Chamber and many people across the country who have seen that wonderful river called the Yellowstone River, which flows through the park to Williston, ND. Below an area called Yankee Jim Canyon to the mouth of the Big Horn River, you can wade across the Yellowstone River and never get your knees wet, which gives you some indication of the impact this drought has had on my State--now going into its fourth year. It is hard to imagine you would have less than a bushel an acre in combining and fewer prospects of any kind of income. For the marginal producers, those days are gone. There is a ritual that goes on in our State. Every year about this time is when you and your wife gather up your books and make the annual trek to see your banker and arrange for operating loans for another year. Those banks that do a lot of business with owners of farms and ranches are telling me that even some professionals are marginal because of no crops, none at all. I ask unanimous consent that I be made a cosponsor of this amendment. I thank my friend from Montana for offering it.

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I am still a little concerned about on what bill this amendment is being offered. I want this to pass, and I would hate to see it passed in the Senate and we get a good warm and fuzzy feeling inside and then we lose it in conference or we lose the stimulus altogether. I do not know what is ahead. I do not see that in my crystal ball. I see a very hazy picture. This amendment needs to be adopted because this is not only happening in the State of Montana, it is happening in other States as well. Keep in mind that the American people have agreed they still want this insurance policy of our ability to feed and clothe this Nation and not become dependent on other sources for our subsistence. I heartily urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I thank the Chair, and I thank my friend from Montana. I yield the floor.

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I rise today to support the Senate resolution honoring Dave Thomas, founder of the successful Wendy's restaurants. His death is a loss to the business and entrepreneurial world, the most powerful engine in the American economy. He opened doors for thousands of young people who used Wendy's as entry-level employment that launched their future. He was a symbol and shining example of leadership that one could be proud to be associated with. But this man was more than Wendy's. The sign that carried Wendy's logo stood for more than just tasty, square hamburgers. The little freckled- faced girl represented much more. I knew Dave through the Shrine of North America. As a Shriner, he exhibited his dedication to children across this country by supporting the 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children and the three Shrine Burn Centers. He was a living example of the phrase, ``No man stands so tall that stoops to help a kid.'' He had a passion for thousands of children who are caught in the circumstance of adoption. He was an adopted child and he never forgot his roots or the wonder of parental love. As an adopted child himself, Dave served as a credible spokesman for both Republican and Democrat White House administrations on numerous adoption initiatives between 1990 and 2000. Using proceeds from two books and many speaking engagements, Dave founded the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption in 1992 to work with families wishing to adopt children. Dave also worked with national adoption agencies to raise awareness about children who are waiting for adoption. Dave went on to create the Dave Thomas Center for Adoption Law to facilitate the adoption process through education and research. Dave was also a driving force in persuading corporate America to reshape their policies to help cover the adoption expenses of employees. Thanks to his efforts, three out of four of the Fortune 1000 companies now offer adoption benefits to employees. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in the Roe v. Wade case. As everyone knows, I support the rights of America's unborn. I recognize, however, that in today's society, unwanted pregnancies will continue to occur. Rather than taking an innocent life, I urge Americans to embrace adoption as an alternative to abortion. Dave never forgot his good fortune and he willingly gave his time and financial resources to make us, as Americans, aware of the less fortunate. All for a kid. We who know him are better for it. Thousands of kids find themselves in better circumstances because of him and the passion that lived deep in his heart. What a legacy. Along with the sponsors of this resolution, I simply want to thank Dave for making the world a better place for thousands of adopted children and also to send my sympathy to his family.

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. I thank the Senator for his question. That was a point I was going to get to, but the Senator got to it a lot quicker and maybe explained it a lot better than I would.

Mr. BURNS. The committee bill?

Mr. BURNS. Madam President, I thank my good friend from Kansas. I was interested in the remarks of my good friend from North Dakota. Yellowstone River separates us, so we are northern tier farmers. I want to bring up a couple points. I probably will not use my 10 minutes because I think the principal sponsors of this amendment have explained it very well. I also want to correct another thing that we do not want to overlook. If farm programs that contain target prices were going to save the family farm, we have 50 years of that experiment to study and still we are losing farmers from the land. If they were going to work in the last 50 years, surely we would have gone through some economic cycles where we would have found something that was successful for agriculture. Nothing more is going on in agriculture that is not going on in other sections of our economy. I have heard a lot of farmers say there is nothing wrong on the farm except the price. Our share of the consumer dollar that should go back to the farm is not getting back to the farm. We used to live on 10 cents, 15 cents, 20 cents of the consumer dollar getting back to the farm. Now we are living with around 8 cents or 9 cents. Therein lies the problem. I supported and had a little to do with--not very much--putting together the Cochran-Roberts amendment. The real design in Freedom to Farm was to transfer the decisionmaking of what they want to do on their farms and ranches back to the farmer and the rancher and also give them the tools to minimize their risk. We failed to do two or three of those items during the life of Freedom to Farm. We never did get reform on crop insurance, and there were several other elements in this whole era when that legislation was in effect. Nobody has to say, when there are four major economists on the Pacific rim, it does not impact us who live in the Northwest because just about all of our production goes to the Pacific rim. When Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Korea, all of those economies went in the tank at the same time, and the value of our dollar went up, it tells me that was an element that was out of the control of anybody. What we finally did was reform crop insurance so it would work, so that the farmer and rancher could go out and protect his investment against those natural elements. We are in basically the third, fourth year of drought in our part of the world. Last year was the worst we have ever had. To give an example, we had no snowpack and that impacts our irrigated farmers. To give another example, the Yellowstone River, which is the longest river in this Nation, is unmarred by dams. That river could probably be crossed east of Billings to Williston, ND, and one's knees would never get wet.

Mr. BURNS. Yes.

Mr. BURNS. Whenever you all run out of gas.

Mr. BURNS. Building on what the Senator from Kansas said, plus the fact we protect the integrity and improve insurance again, we add some more dollars to it so the farmer can deal with the risk of losing a crop. On the point made by the Senator from Kansas, should nothing be cut, nothing is gotten from the committee bill. That was not a correct approach. I am someone who wants to change the CRP, the Conservation Reserve Program, to make it work as it was set up to work. I have a couple of amendments on file now that I think would do that. Conservation reserve was to accomplish a couple of things. It was to set aside the undesirable land and the highly erodable land that should never have been broken by the plow in the history of the land. It should have never been broken up, but it was because we had high prices and farmers had the freedom to plant from fence row to fence row. Of course, with the downturn of the economy, of foreign economies, and the high dollar, the timing could not have been worse. Nonetheless, if I hear my farmers right, they still want the flexibility. They want to still make the decision and plant and sow for the market to make those decisions, especially new crops. When we try to write a farm bill that pertains to all of America, in the northern tier of States our flexibility is limited to very few crops because of a short growing season. In some areas, we cannot grow winter wheat; we must grow spring wheat. So our decisions on what to plant are limited because of where we are and the kind of soil we have. When we add up all the factors, small grain producers in the State of Montana will fair better under Cochran-Roberts--or Roberts-Cochran, whichever is preferred--than the committee bill. Plus the fact we also know what it is to lose a crop. We cut a lot of acres, by law. We cut a lot of one bushel to the acre crop this year. It is the worst I have ever seen. Of course, we have all the elements that North Dakota has also. We could talk about normalization of farm chemicals, the labels on farm chemicals. We can talk about captive shippers. I have some report language I would like to offer later on, depending on whatever survives, to deal with normalization of those labels because we have great challenges in our free trade agreements. Now the real risk is this: If the committee bill is not WTO compliant--one can argue about our trade agreements, our trade negotiations, and one might not like it, but basically we are tied to them by law. If we are not compliant, and we lose a WTO challenge, what do we do? The Secretary of Agriculture suspends the program until it is ironed out, and it could be suspended at a time when our agricultural producers need it most. That is risky, and I ask my colleagues to consider that. I thank my good friend from Kansas, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, today I join my Senate colleagues in support of the conference agreement to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA. I want to thank Senators Gregg and Kennedy for all of the long hours I know they put into this legislation, and all of the conferees for that matter. Now, do I agree with all of the provisions in this bill? No. Does this bill contain everything? No. But I do think it is heading in the right direction, and I do look forward to working with members on many provisions contained within this bill and those not within this bill. This legislation is certainly not perfect, and I bet that much of what it contains will be revisited. There is nothing more important than making sure our kids have the educational tools they need to get ahead in today's competitive world. That means making sure our schools are top notch, making sure students have access to technology and up-to-date learning materials, and our teachers are equipped with the skills and tools they need to be their best. I believe that for the most part, the conferees have done a good job coming up with a plan that will enable our children to compete in tomorrow's economy. Companies moving to a new State place a high priority on a quality education system and access to trained workers. Montana's schools are among the best in the Nation. However, there is more that needs to be done and areas where additional improvements need to be made, such as in science and math. In order to ensure a quality education and future for young Montanans, we must focus on critical areas. I am pleased to see that conferees recognize that schools in rural areas and small America often require additional assistance in implementing high technology programs and other advanced curriculum. So many schools in small rural towns are isolated and technology can offer rural students opportunities that they otherwise would not have. Ensuring that students in rural areas are as technologically literate as students in more urban areas is vital. I believe the conferees have shown their commitment to improve achievement in rural areas and have made sure that rural kids will have the tools they need to participate in the complex economy of the 21st century. Montana has done a lot in the area of distance learning. There is a capability, in many schools to give children a wider variety of classes, and this bill will only help to enhance that. We must also focus on making sure our children have a good learning environment. All the funding, technology and books in the world won't help our children if they do not have a good environment in which to learn. We must ensure that Montana parents and teachers retain control over education decisions, that Federal funds are targeted toward Montana's needs, and that Federal rules don't interfere with our ability to teach our children. States must be able to free themselves from Federal red tape and have the opportunity to use this flexibility to boost student achievement. Whenever possible, decisions about the education of our children should be made at the local level. Montana parents and educators know best what works for Montana kids, and I am glad to see that this conference agreement allows for that. At the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that the Federal Government makes important investments in our children, such as educating students who live on Federal land. I am pleased to see that this conference report also goes a long way to support Impact Aid and fulfill the Federal Government's continuing responsibility to the education of children living on military bases, Indian reservations, or other Federal property. The conference committee has ensured these programs retain high quality and provide for not only the basic elementary and secondary educational needs, but culturally related academic needs as well. I think this agreement, while not perfect, does lay some groundwork and provides an important partnership between Federal, State, and local efforts to educate children and includes ridding some Federal mandates that burden local educators. Rules that make sense in New York are often restrictive and expensive in Havre, MT. I'm glad to see that our local schools will have the flexibility they need to better educate our children. I must say that I have some concerns over the assessment requirements contained in this bill and the funding of these assessments. In a State like Montana, where money is often hard to come by, we have a difficult time funding the few tests currently required. The Federal Government must obligate funds toward these new testing requirements, States cannot be left with an unfunded mandate. Congress has correctly asked schools to teach our disabled children. Unfortunately, only 10 percent of the funding for such activities has come from the Federal Government. That means local school districts, always forced to squeeze shrinking tax dollars, are often times asked to pay thousands of dollars to comply with inflexible Federal rules that many times disregard small rural school districts. It is imperative that we fulfill our promise to fully fund IDEA. While we still have a long way to go, I do believe we have made great strides, and we are heading in the right direction, toward full funding. Full funding of IDEA has always been extremely important to me, and I will continue my work with educators and school boards to make sure that we fund a larger percentage of the costs of this program. I have great confidence that the Senate will also continue working to this end. States and locals must have the funds to develop high-quality professional development programs, address teacher shortages, and provide incentives to retain quality teachers. Some of the most important provisions in this legislation concern teachers. Teachers are our greatest educational resources and have such a great impact on a child's life. I am glad to see that this legislation goes a long way to ensure technology and training opportunities for our teachers. As Congress continues to consider various education programs, I will be actively involved to make sure Montana's needs are addressed. I will fight against a ``one-size-fits-all'' approach that in my opinion, tends to do more harm to a quality education than good, and will fight to ensure that significant investment is provided to all children and their teachers.

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, that is the amendment on which I just had the opportunity to speak. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be laid aside and that I be allowed to offer the second amendment.

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

Mr. BURNS. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BURNS. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I offer this amendment, and I will talk more about it later. But it is a limitation on the amount of acres that one landowner could put into CRP. The CRP is a well-intentioned program, but it has been changed. I guess it evolved. It has been done mostly through Executive order rather than through legislation. I think it is about time that we get the Conservation Reserve Program back to its original intent. The intent was to set aside those undesirable or highly erodible acres, and the Government would reimburse the farmer for good conservation practices. It was very successful. I don't know of a time in Montana when we have had a better habitat for our upland game birds--grouse and pheasant. We had the situation where some people under farm programs were plowing from fence row to fence row. Lands that should have never ever been broken were going into cropland. We kind of killed two birds with one stone. We said: OK. Let us set some of those lands aside. Maybe that will cut back a little bit on production. That will give us a better market. But those highly erodible and marginal lands could also be used for a very good use--for the environment and the maintenance of our habitat for our wildlife. I don't know of a farmer or rancher who doesn't like a little bit of wildlife around. I know I do. My father even planted little areas of lespedeza, and put four rows of crops around it. It was covered with quail in those areas. They are a marvelous bird. This amendment deals with the amount of land you can put into CRP. There is also another reason for this amendment. We have seen in rural areas that our smaller towns have dried up. We have seen very good productive land put into the Conservation Reserve Program. Instead of the farmer selling the land to a young farmer, they have put it in there. And they go where the snow does not fly. It is really not a bad deal, when you think about it. But it is counterproductive to our communities when the biggest base is production agriculture. Those lands should be kept in production. After all, the American people have decided they want their insurance policy, called ``plentiful food.'' They want the quality and the quantity. They also want the grocery store open 24 hours a day. That is the reason for this amendment. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. BURNS. While we are in the process of reviewing that, there are other areas of this legislation where we could offer amendments, areas which I believe have to be addressed by this body and by this Government. We have a situation on the northern border with our good friends in Canada that is intolerable when it comes to movement of farm chemicals back and forth across the border. We have farmers in Montana who farm both sides of that international boundary. We would like to normalize those labels of like chemicals that are labeled to do the same things. So far, we have not been able to do that. I think it would be inappropriate, again, to offer an amendment, hard and fast, where we could deal with that problem. But I will be submitting some language because this does involve the EPA, the Department of Agriculture, and it also involves our International Trade Representative. To get them involved, report language is going to be needed in order to deal with that problem. We could also talk about captive shipper in those areas where we only have one railroad. There is an old saying in Montana that you farm the first year for the Government, the second year is for yourself, and the third year is for the railroad, because they take about a third of your crop just to move it to the processor or to the export terminals. We are in a position where it costs us more than it should. It is funny that you can ship grain from Omaha to Minneapolis or Portland cheaper than you can ship it from Montana. We have to deal with that, and so far we have not been able to come to grips with how to deal with monopolies in a State, especially when it impacts the movement from a State that produces raw materials. Of course, we have that situation in grain. We have the situation in coal. It impacts the cost of energy. It also impacts the cost of farming. We forget around here that agriculture buys retail and sells wholesale, and usually pays the freight both ways. We could also get on the old populist line, that what is lacking in agriculture today is that for years--and I suggest this to my friend from Kansas--for years we lived on the part of the consumer dollar that ranges from 15 cents to 20 cents. That is not true today. We are down to 9 cents or 10 cents. We have no lever in the market. We can't just go to the marketplace and say: No, it cost me $4 to produce the grain. I am not going to sell it for less than $4; that would be silly. Because that is like going to a store or tractor dealer or fertilizer guy, who can say: No, it cost us so much for the fertilizer, and this is what it is going to cost you. And guess what. We pay them. But a farmer doesn't have that leverage in the market that he once had. Yesterday we had an amendment dealing with packer concentration, basically, saying the packers could not own livestock, or, if they did, they could only own it for 14 days prior to the scheduled slaughter. I don't know how you get 14 days and I don't know how you define that-- that is yet to be determined. There is a reason for this. There is going to be a reason we should deal with the Packers and Stockyards Act, because that is a law that was written way back in the 1930s and it has never been amended or changed in a substantive way. Back in those years when I was a lad, I would say 80 percent of the livestock that was marketed went through terminal markets. We can remember the great stockyards in Kansas City, Omaha, Chicago, Minneapolis, or South St. Paul, Sioux Falls, and Sioux City, East St. Louis--all the great terminal markets. Over 80 percent were marketed that way. Packers specifically in that law were prohibited from owning a commission house or stockyards. There was a reason for it. Back then, we had the ``big five.'' There was Wilson, Swift, and Cuttahay. I have a fantastic memory, but it is short. Back in those days we had the five major ones when we talked about livestock marketing and processing. Now the movement of slaughter animals to market is reversed. The chicken industry is a horizontal and vertical entry. In fact, I would say it is done 75 percent of the time in the hog business. They have ``chickenized'' the hog business. But in cattle, they have not. If 80 percent of the cattle are going to move to the plants without going through a stockyard, or commission house, or an auction market, then another firewall has to be built. There is a very good reason for that. The intent of the law was good, and it worked. It worked to benefit the producer. That is why the amendment that was voted on yesterday in the Chamber which came from the livestock area was successful. I ask the Chair, How are we doing? Can I offer my amendments?

Mr. BURNS. I ask unanimous consent to set the pending amendment aside.

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

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Cochran- Roberts approach to this problem. I think it is a middle-of-the-road approach to where we are under today's policies, what was proposed and what was voted out of the Agriculture Committee. Yesterday there were a few of us who believed the cloture vote was not a good experience. Most of us who had amendments, and substantive amendments, had not been able to talk about those amendments or even file them. We believe they are very important. We all have the habit, in this debate, of being a little bit provincial. We look at what we need in our States. What we have experienced in the State of Montana-- in the last 3 years especially, but basically we are in the middle of a 5-year drought. That cycle does not appear to be breaking in our State. We had a little snow here 3 weeks ago, but since then the temperatures have moderated and, again, we are into a very dry fall. It is unusual for Montana. We have had winters when it has been very good in my State, even though we are on the northern tier. Nonetheless, it has been a dry fall and of course we live in the part of the country where, if it does not winter, it does not summer. We are afraid of that again. The present legislation, the Daschle substitute, still offers some very troubling proposals. The day before yesterday, an extended debate was headed by our good friend from New Mexico, Senator Domenici. In the conservation title there is a section title dealing with CRP, to thrust the Government into a position where they can buy out, or coerce out, a farmer or rancher's water rights. This would involve going around the State water adjudication process, going around water trusts that have been set up for States such as Oregon and Montana and other Western States. We are still looking at that section. Even though it was amended to allow States to opt into the program, we are still looking at it because I think the whole subsection of the conservation title should be stricken. We could talk about that and offer another amendment on that, but that would not be productive during this debate. But I do have a couple of amendments I am going to offer now. I ask unanimous consent that other pending amendments be set aside.

Mr. BURNS. I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, this amendment also deals with conservation reserve. The original intent was to take those marginal and erodible acres out of production and set them aside. This amendment pays the landowner more for the acres that he sets aside that are the lower class lands and soils and pays less for the productive land. This is an incentive for the farmer or rancher to set aside the land that we really want to see in the Conservation Reserve Program, and it will do everything that we wanted to do that I spoke of on the first amendment. It is fairly straightforward. If we think this program is important, then we must fulfill the intent of the program and give the producer the incentive to carry it out. I think that is what this does. I will offer amendments as we go along, but those are the two main amendments that I wanted to offer to the Daschle substitute of the farm bill. I hope as we march down this road to try to craft this legislation that we can at least take a commonsense look at these amendments. It seems in agriculture when you start talking about a farm bill everybody becomes a farmer. Sometimes we get led astray when we are not living in the real world on what it is like in the country. I want to tell you that there is only one problem in the country; that is the price. Everything else would go away if we were getting a fair price for the product. The price we get now has very little to do with the cost of the final product we buy in the grocery store. As I said, we were very happy when we used to receive 15 to 20 cents of the consumer dollar. Now we are down around 9 or so. That becomes a real strain. I thank the Chair, and I thank my good friends who are managing this bill because it is difficult to do that, at best. But we will start talking about two other items and offering some report language that deals with those items so that we can start the process to deal with that. Those items deserve to be debated. I think everybody in this body needs to know the particulars of what is involved with captive shippers and the problem we have in the normalization of labels when we talk about farm chemicals and fertilizers. Mr. President, before I yield the floor, I ask unanimous consent that my amendments be set aside and we return to the amendment that was considered before I offered my two amendments.

Mr. BURNS

Mr. BURNS. Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to Ron Cass, a man who embraces the idea that one person can truly make a difference. Ron is retiring after 28 years with KXLF-TV as General Manager in Butte, MT. While his job required a keen sense of community, it was his dedication to his family and the city of Butte that I want to recall today. Ron joined KXLF in 1974 and worked his way up the corporate ladder. He was named President of KXLF Communications, Inc. in 1986 and later added the management of KBZK in Bozeman, MT. Born in Harlowton, Ron started out as a disc jockey but soon chose television as his medium of choice. I believe he chose wisely. During the past several years, Ron has been instrumental in helping me understand a variety of telecommunication issues. He has given me his ideas freely and helped me to understand not only the growing complexity of the industry but also the need to remember what is important for Montana TV viewers who rely on the medium for their information. Meanwhile, Ron found himself complaining about the current state of affairs in his hometown of Butte. He realized rather quickly that talking about problems didn't produce results--actions certainly speak louder than words. Ron went into action. He now has a long list of accomplishments and I believe that Butte is a better place today because of his efforts. Whether as President of the Butte Chamber of Commerce, a member of the United Way Board of Directors, part of the Butte-Silver Bow Law Enforcement Commission, or even a member of the county's Study Commission, Ron rolled up his sleeves and Butte reaped the benefits. He also made a commitment to the local Exchange Club and the Pachyderms. He even battled Butte's frigid temperatures to help the Salvation Army during their annual bell ringing fundraiser at Christmas time. Those who know Ron Cass know that his personal participation is not for personal glory or a Butte parade on St. Patrick's Day. Ron's involvement comes from his desire to give back; give back to the very folks who helped him succeed in Montana when he first arrived and decided to raise a family in Butte. Today, Ron cherishes his family and many friends as he begins his retirement. His children, Barbara, Lura, and Dan--and his grandchildren, Timothy, Sean, Alex, Andrew, and Jake--and of course, his fiance, Nancy all agree that ``Poppa'' is a true role model. About the same time he decided to contribute his talent, energy, and strength to Butte, his grandson, Alex, was born with Down Syndrome. From that day on, Ron made it his mission to support and encourage Alex in all that he would choose to do. That has included his grandson's efforts in Special Olympics and the joys of mainstreamed education. Ron Cass's unselfish actions throughout his CBS Television Network career transcend the airwaves. His actions are shown today in the quality of his family's lives and the many friends who will gather and honor him before or after his last ``working'' day. I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank Ron for all he has done to benefit the City of Butte, and the State of Montana. I want to wish him well in his retirement. While I am certain he will be spending plenty of time within the community he holds so close to his heart, I'm also certain that he'll be enjoying the Treasure State on the back of his motorcycle with the wind in his hair.