C. Cox

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague the gentleman from San Diego, CA [Mr. Cunningham].

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona, [Mr. Koble], a member of the Committee on Appropriations and the Committee on the Budget, and a distinguished member of the policy committee. (Mr. KOBLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, there is hanging in the Republican Cloakroom a photograph of Bill Emerson taken on March 1, 1954, when he was a page here. As all of us know, he served as a page on that fateful day when the House of Representatives was attacked by terrorists, and the photograph shows Bill Emerson carrying on his shoulders the prone body of Alben Barkley, a Representative here, who was in fact shot during that attack. That was very early on in Bill's congressional career. When the first Republican House of Representatives, the first Republican majority in 40 years, was sworn in and the gavel was banged in 1995, in January, it was Bill Emerson who was in the chair. He was the only current Member of the House of Representatives who had been here during the last Republican majority because he had been here as a page. Probably, as a result, no one had more knowledge of this institution; and as so many speakers have pointed out this morning, more care for it, more understanding, and more love for the Congress of the United States. It is natural for each of us to express ourselves at a time like this by giving a speech on the floor of the House. That is what we do. Bill himself gave many speeches. He was a fine speaker, but, more important than the Congressional Record, a history of what Bill Emerson did here, was what those of us who worked with him saw and watched. His example is a powerful one. I am sure Bill would want us all, on the occasion of his death, to do more than to remember him; to do this, to follow his example, to be like him. Perhaps he would not have thought so highly of himself, as we do, that he would have held himself up as an example for all of us in that way, but Bill had a special quality of being able to disagree, which we do here on the floor every day when we engage one another in debate, without being disagreeable. So each of us can pay tribute to Bill Emerson today, and all the rest of our days, in no better way than by trying to be a little bit more like him.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, as Republicans and Democrats in this House we disagree about many things, but we should not disagree for a moment on the need for ethics and honesty in Government. During the administration of Ronald Reagan I worked in the White House, in the counsel's office, as a senior associate counsel to the President. I was proud of the reputation that that independent office in the White House maintained as a post-Watergate creation to make sure that after Richard Nixon and the Watergate offenses, never again was a President in a position of lacking the kind of independent honest advice that was necessary to make sure that there would not be lawbreaking within the White House itself. That office has maintained its reputation in a dignified way through Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush. Sadly, in this administration the opposite has been true. Most recently the deputy counsel to the President has been named in a criminal indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator. This is not a hard question. Bruce Lindsey must resign. If he refuses to do so, the President himself must demand it. We as Members of Congress interested in honesty and ethics in Government must demand it.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, the people of Minnesota have on several occasions recognized the enormous contributions of Mary Jean O'Reilly Miller to the education and cultural betterment of that State, and it is appropriate that the U.S. Congress now do so as well. This week, after 43 years as a teacher, Mary Miller will retire from a distinguished career that will shine as an enduring model for years to come. Perhaps it is true that teachers are made, not born, but Mary Jean O'Reilly came from a family of educators. Her grandfather served on the school board. Her aunt and uncle were teachers. Her brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces are teachers and school administrators. As a child in Goodhue, MN, she grew up playing teacher in a make-believe school with her playmates, and she has dedicated her life to that passion ever since. Mary's own education reflects a lifelong commitment to scholarship and the improvement of her professional skills. She is thoroughly a product of Minnesota schools, and an alumna in whom all of her graduating institutions now take especial pride. Following her graduation from Goodhue High School, she earned advanced degrees at no fewer than three institutions of higher learning: Winona State College, the University of Minnesota, and St. Thomas College--which awarded her a master of arts in education. But her education did not stop there, and it has never stopped to this day. She has pursued continuing studies at the University of Minnesota, St. Thomas, Mankato State College, Southwest State College, and Hamline University. Among her many other professional qualifications, she holds a lifetime certificate in elementary education. Teaching is a delicate art. Far more than knowledge, it requires understanding--and above all, understanding of people, their concerns, their lives, and their community. Mary Miller took her first teaching position almost half a century ago in the town of Mahtomedi. In 1996, she was a teacher there still, 43 years after that first commitment. No one better understands and cares for her community, her neighbors, and her students than Mary. Whether leading school activities or student bus tours, contributing her time to community projects, or helping a local family in time of need, Mary has shown by her living example that we all need teachers, and that education does not end but rather begins at the schoolhouse walls. Three generations of Minnesotans have grown and prospered with her help. Many of former students, now adults, still come to her classroom to see her. It would be difficult to write Mahtomedi's history and that of its citizens in the four decades since World War II without in the process taking full stock of her significant contributions. Long before Federal and State laws made provision for special education, Mary Miller was a leader in the field. She earned professional degrees in special education, and has taught children with special needs throughout her career. As she looks back on her own achievements, it is this contribution above all others that stands our as most meaningful. The Mahtomedi School District honored her as Teacher of the Year in 1995, and again as Teacher of Distinction in 1996. Last year, she was among only 10 honorees selected statewide as finalists for the Minnesota Teacher of the Year. Today, it is appropriate that we recognize her here, in the U.S. Congress, for her lifetime of achievement for our country. Many of us who are not teachers by profession understand, nonetheless, the responsibilities that teaching entails, because we are spouses and parents. The same individual care and concern that we hope a good teacher will show for our children is the measure of our success at home as mothers and fathers, husbands and wives. Not surprisingly, Mary Miller's four uninterrupted decades of commitment and success as a teacher are matched by her steadfast devotion as mother and wife. Later this year, she and her husband, Frederick P. ``Bud'' Miller, will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. Mary and Bud have raised three grown sons, Michael, Patrick, and Kevin--who served with distinction in Operation Desert Storm--and are now deservingly proud grandparents. As she retires from the responsibilities of teaching that she loves so well, can anyone doubt that Mary will redouble her devotions and attentions to these young children--or that they will not inherit her love of learning? In this way, and in her exploration of the many new frontiers that now await her, Mary Miller will continue to improve the lives of everyone around her. Her retirement from teaching, like a graduation ceremony, is more accurately called a commencement: It is the beginning of a new chapter in a most remarkable life. Plato observed that ``the direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.'' Mr. Speaker, Mary Miller has been a positive influence not only in the lives of her family and friends, but of thousands of boys and girls, men and women, whose lives she has turned in a positive direction by her energy and effort. For her contributions to her native Minnesota and to our Nation, I know that all of my colleagues will wish to join me in extending the congratulations and best wishes of the House of Representatives to Mary Jean O'Reilly Miller on the occasion of her retirement.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, House Republicans are committed to higher take-home pay and better job opportunities for low-income Americans. We strongly support policies to give low-income Americans increased wages and improved chances to find work. But we are against Government-mandated wage and price controls that destroy jobs and hurt the economy. President Nixon concluded, after leaving the Presidency, that the wage and price controls initiated during his administration were a serious mistake. During much of the 1970's, the President and Congress imposed harsh wage and price controls on most sectors of the economy. These policies were disastrous for the long-term economy and failed to meet even short-term goals, instead contributing to the ``stagflation''--economic stagnation coupled with runaway inflation-- for which the Carter era is known. By destroying economic opportunity, these policies dimmed the American dream for millions. All this changed in 1981, when, as one of his first actions as President, Ronald Reagan ended the remaining Carter price controls. His action became the first element of a coordinated economic program of deregulation, the end of price and wage controls, elimination of trade barriers, an inflation-fighting monetary policy, and tax cuts to encourage economic growth and increase the take-home pay of all Americans. Ronald Reagan's economic policy ushered in the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history. Echoing Ronald Reagan, Candidate Bill Clinton promised in 1992 to balance the budget, cut taxes for the middle class, and grow the economy. But once in office, he signed into law the largest tax increase in American history, stifling economic growth. In 1995, the economy grew at a sickly 1.5 percent. Clinton's vetoes of spending cuts insure continued deficits well into the 21st century. Then, having succeeded in implementing this tax-and-spend agenda--without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate--he sought to nationalize our health care system by placing a bureaucrat in nearly every health care decision, levying taxes on excessive health care benefits, and imposing price controls to ration health care for every American. Republicans strongly opposed Clinton's effort to impose price controls on one-seventh of our national economy. That principled opposition to Government controls on the health care system contributed measurably to the 1994 election of the first Republican Congress in 40 years. Government should not--indeed, cannot--rationally determine the prices of labor, goods, or services for health care, energy, or any other industry in a free market economy. In the 1970's, when the Federal Government imposed price controls on gasoline, the result was shortages and long lines. By attempting artificially to fix the price of gasoline, Government ensured we got less of it. Wage controls have precisely the same effect. `'Raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled workers,'' the New York Times editorialized when the Democrats controlled Congress, ``and fewer will be hired.'' Their editorial was headlined, ``The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.'' The politically liberal editorial policy of the New York Times caused them to ask: ``If a higher minimum means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals?'' Their answer: the liberal arguments aren't convincing--particularly since ``those at greatest risk from a higher minimum would be young, poor workers, who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.'' Because in so many cases the minimum wage jobs that will be lost are the all-important first jobs--the jobs that give young Americans the experience, the discipline, and the references they need to move to better, higher-paying jobs in the future--an imprudent increase in the minimum wage would contribute to cycles of poverty and dependence. Such Government focus on starting wages is especially misguided since low paying, entry-level jobs usually yield rapid pay increases. According to data compiled by the Labor Department, 40 percent of those who start work at the minimum wage will receive a raise within only 4 months. Almost two-thirds will receive a raise within a year. After 12 months' work at the minimum wage, the average pay these workers earn jumps to more than $5.50 an hour--a 31 percent increase. In a very real sense, the minimum wage is really a starting wage--the pay an unskilled, inexperienced worker can expect on first entering the work force. Once these workers have a foot on the employment ladder, their hard work and abilities are quickly rewarded. But these rewards can only be earned if workers can find that all-important first job. Consider who earns the minimum wage. According to the Labor Department, half are under 25 years of age, often high school or college students. Some 63 percent work part-time, 62 percent are second-income earners. And fully 80 percent live in households with incomes above the poverty level. Even Labor Secretary Robert Reich, in a 1993 memorandum to now- Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, admitted that ``most minimum wage earners are not poor.'' But while undue increases in the minimum wage do little to help the poor, curtailing unskilled employment opportunities will exacerbate poverty. Bill Clinton himself has argued against raising the minimum wage. In 1993, he called it ``the wrong way to raise the incomes of low-income workers.'' He was right: according to Labor Department statistics, half a million jobs were lost in the 2 years following the last increase in the minimum wage. In the year after the minimum wage was increased, 15.6 percent fewer young men (aged 15-19), and 13 percent fewer women, had jobs. Over three-fourths of the 22,000 members of the American Economics Association believe a minimum wage increase would lead to a loss in jobs. Many estimates of the cost of raising the minimum wage exceed one half of a million jobs lost. One such study, by Michigan State University Professor David Neumark and Federal Reserve economist William Wascher, estimates a loss between 500,000 and 680,000 jobs. ``The primary consequence of the minimum wage law is not an increase in the incomes of the least skilled workers,'' liberal economists William Bumble and Clinton Federal Reserve appointee Alan Blinder recently wrote, ``but a restriction of their employment opportunities.'' An increase would also be an unfunded mandate on every State and locality in America. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the minimum wage increase will cost State and local governments, that is, taxpayers, $1.4 billion over 5 years. President Clinton did not raise the issue of the minimum wage publicly during 1993 or 1994, when the Democrats controlled the Congress. Congressional Democrats, likewise, failed to hold even a single hearing on the minimum wage during that same period. The Democratic devotion to this issue in 1996 is entirely political--and, as the New York Times editorialized, inexplicable for liberals who care about the working poor. The snare and delusion of wage and price controls must not distract us from the fundamental economic and fiscal policy reforms necessary to expand our economy and create good job opportunities for all Americans. A balanced budget, tax relief for workers and small business, and regulatory relief from unnecessary Government red tape offer the surest means of steering our economy toward lasting growth. Comprehensive welfare reform that promotes work and breaks the cycle of dependency can go far toward restoring the natural incentives for individual responsibility and personal growth. And redoubled efforts to focus our educational resources in the classroom--where educators, parents, and students exercise control over learning rather than taking dictation from Federal and State governments--can pave the way for a better trained and more employable workforce for the future. These solid Republican policies will lead us to a better, stronger America. Wage and price controls, in contrast, are premised on the notion that Government fiat can raise wages without cost--a notion that fails both in theory and in fact. It is individual initiative rather than government beneficence that creates wealth, jobs, and a higher standard of living for all Americans.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, 80 years ago, on May 26, 1916, barnstorming daredevil Charles P. ``Chuck'' Doyle was born in Minneapolis, MN. Eighty years later, Chuck is still creating aviation history. He bought his first airplane while still a Washburn High School student. It was an OX-5 powered Travel Air biplane. With this--and his motorcycle--he started on his path as an unofficial daredevil and official aviation pioneer. In 1935, Chuck Doyle made his first parachute jump as part of the Thrill Day Air Show at the Minnesota State Fair. Two years later, he began performing regularly at shows and fairs around the country. Whether on wings or wheels, he loved to excite his audiences. He ramp- jumped his Harley over lines of cars, magically survived carefully planned head-on auto collisions and boardwall crashes, piloted his motorcycle through tunnels of flame--and memorably, during a thrill show in Mississippi in 1937, even crashed a plane into a clapboard house. He worked as a civilian pilot for Northwest Airlines during the Second World War--honoring their requirement that he quit the thrill shows, even in his spare time. It was during this time, however, that Chuck first began skywriting and towing aerial banners--a pursuit he maintained until recently. The great airplanes that the U.S. military retired after World War II provided Chuck Doyle with a new opportunity: acquiring surplus warbird aircraft, refurbishing and restoring them, displaying them in museums, and even giving them a new life in the air. Three of his masterpieces have been placed on display in the U.S. Air Force Museum at Dayton, OH. His talent for restoration was never more in evidence than when he reconstructed a replica of the vintage Curtis Pusher--one of the earliest American planes, originally designed and built in 1910. Chuck's handiwork wasn't just historically authentic and interesting to look at. In 1985, he took his exact replica of this 75-year-old vintage aircraft to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where the authorities agreed to close down one of the main runways for his exclusive use. He then proceeded successfully to pilot the only truly authentic Curtis Pusher replica ever to fly. The plane now hangs on exhibit in the main terminal of that airport. Most mortals can only marvel at the way Chuck Doyle so often succeeded in his relentless pursuit of the nearly impossible. But even Chuck couldn't beat city hall, when it came to preserving his cherished private airstrip. Still, his much-publicized--if ultimately losing-- battle with the city of Apple Valley, MN, extended his record of providing thrills and excitement, this time for the newspaper-reading public. As a lifelong member of dozens of aviation organizations, Chuck Doyle has contributed in thousands of ways to the progress of the era of manned flight. In 1992, his lifetime of contributions was in turn recognized by his peers, by historians, and by civic leaders when he was inducted to the Minnesota Aviation Hall of Fame. There, he shares the company of a pantheon of internationally famous aviators, among whom are two other well-known ``Charleses'': Charles ``Speed'' Holman-- for whom Holman Field is named--and Charles Lindbergh. His son, Charles Jr., also known as ``Chuck,'' is an airline pilot and aircraft owner who is carrying on the family tradition. It is no easy feat to attempt to summarize 80 years of Charles senior's life. But it is easy to observe one characteristic of overriding significance. More than a crazy daredevil stunt man who survived it all, more than a distinguished airline pilot and professional aviator who has logged over 30,000 hours in the air, entirely accident free--more than an air historian, aviation pioneer, and dedicated father--Chuck Doyle is a great American. His boundless spirit and courageous example remind us of the quintessential character of our country, and of what Thomas Jefferson must surely have had in mind when he described our national dedication to the pursuit of happiness. Chuck has given thousands of Americans happiness during a distinguished and exciting career. As he celebrates his 80th birthday, Mr. Speaker, I know that all of the Members of this Congress join in wishing him every happiness in return.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time. I want to especially thank the chairman for his acceptance in advance of the Solomon amendment, which much of the debate already has focused upon. One of my colleagues across the aisle suggested that support for the Solomon amendment would somehow require one to long for the days of the cold war. But the truth is that the Nunn-Lugar moneys for Russia were approved in that headier, indeed giddy time after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union itself, when the Congress typically sought to show its approval, its support for something, by showering money upon it. Over $1.5 billion has now gone not to the people of Russia, but to the Government, and the Government of Russia, particularly after the next two rounds of elections in June and July, may well be back in the hands of a Communist imperialist, Gennadi Zyuganov. There was never much of a budget for these moneys to begin with. President Clinton expanded the purpose for which Nunn-Lugar aid might be spent to include housing for officers, defense conversion, and so on. In this bill there is an attempt to address that. But what Chairman Solomon is talking about doing is even more important. President Clinton ought to be able to certify before the American taxpayers send a third of a billion dollars, as requested this year, President Clinton should be able to certify that Russia is complying with arms control agreements. If they are not, why should U.S. taxpayers subsidize them? Russia should not be modernizing its nuclear arsenal at the very time we are allegedly paying for dismantling nuclear weapons. What could be more reasonable? President Clinton should be able to make that certification. Russia should not be sharing intelligence with Cuba. If you are interested in supporting with United States taxpayer funds Russia sharing intelligence with Cuba, I do not understand that. The President should be able to certify that Russia is willing to respect the sovereignty of Lithuania. My own concern about Russian deployment in Kalinigrad, where they have twice as many Russian troops on Lithuania's sovereign soil as American troops have deployed in all of Europe, cause me to have reservations about this. Mr. Chairman, this is a fine amendment and I urge Members to support it.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, to respond to my colleagues, when something is 15 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old, 100 years old, at some point the manufacturer stops being liable and the person who is responsible for maintaining the piece of equipment ought to become liable, and that is the common sense that is in this bill. The truth is that in my part of the country, in California, southern California, we have a lot of lawyers in West Los Angeles. Just that part of the city, there are more lawyers than in all of Japan. California, our fourth largest industry is lawyers, just judged by their legal fees. The only bigger industries in California are health care, the movie industry, and computers. No. 4 is lawyers fees. Our system is a great wheel of fortune, and to respond to my colleague from Massachusetts about the fraction of cases that have punitive damage awards or the fraction of cases that we are talking about here, over 90 percent of all cases never get a single day of trial. Therefore, they have no judgments; therefore, they have no damages. Everybody settles on the basis of what we euphemistically call transaction costs, by which we mean some sort of discounted estimation of the lawyers fees it would take to get to the other end, and, therefore, there is not any justice. Or if there is justice, it is entirely random. We started out in the House of Representatives with a much broader bill. We covered services as well as products. We covered health care lawsuits. All of this now is out. We are down to products, and my colleague from Massachusetts joined with others to get everything else out of the bill, and now he says we are only covering products. In fact, he took out a rule that would have made people bringing frivolous lawsuits pay the costs of the other side so that we get all of those cases out of the courts, and now we are down to this. The Washington Post has endorsed it. It is very reasonable. Our Democratic colleagues in the Senate have said President Clinton here is catering to special interests. I would not say that. But the truth is that the high cost of litigation, the perverse incentives, the slow cumbersome system that we have got right now, demands reform which we have not had here for 40 years. This bill deserves to become law. Override President Clinton's veto. He has proven there is no tort reform he will support. It is up to us to see this job through.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, during his recent circumnavigation of the planet, President Clinton stopped at the G-7 summit to hector our allies about leaning harder on the Iranian mullahs who are shipping arms to the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. But while he was publicly condemning Iran, and while the administration and the President were calling Iran the main source of international terrorism, we find that President Clinton was in fact conniving for even larger Iranian shipments into the Balkans. Mr. Speaker, let us take a look at the history of this. It was May 1992 that the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia. The United States supported this arms embargo, but Bill Clinton, who was running for President, opposed it. He said it was a cruel arms embargo, and that we ought to lift it. He became President and completely changed his policy, and broke that promise and said, ``No, we are going to have an arms embargo, because it would be wrong now for anyone to ship arms into the Balkans.'' The Congress, for its part, agreed with candidate Clinton, not President Clinton, and supported lifting the arms embargo with a view not to letting Iran into Europe but, rather, our allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey supply the Bosnian Muslims with arms. But the President of the United States opposed even that, and in particular, of course, he opposed the United States in any way being involved in arms shipments into the Balkans. Finally, Mr. Speaker, we discover that the President concealed not just from the American people, not just from the Congress, but from the CIA and from the Joint Chiefs of Staff the United States' complicity, through our American Ambassador, in these direct Iranian shipments into the Balkans. What is wrong with this? First, it is wrong to structure an operation of this type for the express purpose of concealing something from the Congress. All that has gone before about whether or not these shipments were taking place, whether or not people knew about them, elides over the fact that what we did not know and what the CIA station chief did not know and what the Joint Chiefs did not know was about the administration's and the President's and the Ambassador's own involvement, all of this structured for the purpose of concealing this from the Congress. What about the policy? It is insane. It is absolutely insane to give Iran a toehold into Europe. That is the policy that was being concealed here. One can understand why. Is it worthwhile for us to have a very time-limited and financially limited committee to take a look at this? Of course it is.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I also appreciate the opportunity to address the very good points that have been raised. While Dave Berry has made fun of the National Helium Reserve, and while P.J. O'Rourke called it a program that is amazingly stupid, even by Government standards, and while most people when they think of helium think of party balloons, the truth is that there is a very real and important high-tech application for helium. It is irreplaceable in many high-tech applications, and it is very important to our high-tech economy that we do our utmost to conserve what is a very finite and limited resource. Every time you make a long distance phone call, you are using helium, because the fiberoptics that carry your voice are manufactured with its aid. If you ever had an MRI, you know of the uses of helium in superconducting, because it is the cryogenic properties of liquid helium that make possible the high magnetic fields used in magnetic resonance imaging. Deep sea divers do not get the bends because of developments in oxygen and helium mixtures. All of these and other uses of helium, even the Federal Government's own uses at NASA and the Department of Defense, are high-technology, and are examples of just how important it is to us today, as it was not in the 1920's when this program was started, to conserve all of the helium that we can. We cannot forget that we manufacture helium as a byproduct of natural gas. When we produce that natural gas, it is important that the cost of extracting the helium is not such that we cannot make it economic to do so. We do not want to vent the helium into the atmosphere. So this bill achieves that conservation objective by actually making it more likely people will invest their funds, private funds, into recovering helium at the wellhead. Selling helium below the cost of extraction, which is what we would be doing without the formula in this bill, is obviously antithetical to the goal of conservation. So what the bill says is that the $1.4 billion debt to taxpayers must be recovered through the sale of the 34 billion cubic feet of helium that we now have stored underground in Texas.

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, we have actually passed this bill already once in the House and in the Senate. Unfortunately the legislation to privatize the national helium reserve was then included in the larger Balanced Budget Act that was vetoed by President Clinton. This time we are wisely passing the bill all by itself because it is, I think, enormously popular on both the Democrat and Republican sides after many, many years of hard work to get it that far. I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Hawaii [Mr. Abercrombie] for his work in helping us move this bill to the floor, as well as my colleague from California, who is, as chairman, responsible for bringing this bill directly to the floor. I would also like to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts, Barney Frank, who spoke earlier on this legislation. He and I coauthored it in not only the current Congress but past Congresses. It has been many, many years that we have been working on this bill. I am also grateful to my colleague from Nevada, Congresswoman, Barbara Vucanovich, a member of the House Republican leadership; to the gentleman from Alaska, chairman Don Young; and to the gentleman from Ohio, Congressman Frank Cremeans, who along with the gentleman from California, Ken Calvert, who we just heard speak on this bill, they in particular have worked tirelessly on this legislation in the Committee on Resources, to make sure that what may now look very easy and completely agreeable to almost all sides could actually happen. I would also like to thank Chris Kearney, Bill Condit, and Sharla Bickley of the Committee on Resources' staff who have done yeomen's work on this issue and whose efforts deserve recognition. To recap. The helium program was begun in the 1920's for a good reason. At the time there was no private industry of helium production but there was a national security need to field a fleet of blimps in time of war. Fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft have now replaced the blimp in our national defense and, as I mentioned earlier, it is now the high-tech commercial and scientific uses for helium that dominate. Today, because of all of those commercial uses, there is a thriving commercial industry in helium that supplies 90 percent of the world's needs from right here in the good old USA. There is no reason whatever that the Government of the United States should uniquely supply its own needs of this commodity when it does not for any other, even strategic metals and commodities and resources. So this bill will do two things. It will, first, sell off and liquidate those physical assets of the Government facility in Texas; privatize them, if you will, immediately; and, second, over a 19-year period, sell off the 34 billion cubic feet of stored underground helium, not for immediate use, for continued conservation and eventual sale over who knows how many decades or perhaps centuries, to the private industry. So that, privately, suppliers will then own that helium. But keep in mind, for those of us who are physicists, not I, but certainly the gentleman who spoke before me, keep in mind the law, the fundamental law of the conservation of matter. Just because we change title, just because we change ownership from the Federal Government to private hands does not mean that the helium will not still be there. It will be there. In fact, more of it will be there because of the incentives for increased helium recovery a the wellhead created by this legislation. The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 will do a few more things that we can all applaud. It will require the production of honest financial statements for this Government enterprise in the short run so that we know finally just how much it is costing us. We know the operation is $1.4 billion in debt to the taxpayers right now and loses tens of millions each year because of that interest burden that it has never been able to meet. But we do not know to a certainty what the operations cost; and we shall, as a result of the passage of this bill. In addition, we will ensure that the debt, that $1.4 billion debt to taxpayers, is recovered. That is the ultimate object of this legislation. The taxpayers hold the mortgage on the debt and now, by relying on the security of the underground stored helium, the taxpayers will get their money back. Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I am delighted that the leadership of this Congress has made passage of the Helium Privatization Act a priority, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join with me and the bipartisan leadership you have heard speak on this bill in supporting this important measure. It is high time we finally retire this expensive waste of taxpayers' money. Mr. Speaker, several weeks ago articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that concerns about U.R. 3008 had been raised by the American Physical Society. In fact, APS has not taken a position on the legislation. Moreover, the background paper prepared by APS was premised on the mistaken notion that by ``privatization'' of the helium reserve, the bill meant immediate sale of the stockpile. That is obviously not the case. To the contrary, many physicists (and APS members) have announced support for the bill. The following letter explains many of the problems with the original, now outdated, APS statement: Arthur W. Francis Consulting, New York, NY, January 12, 1996. American Physical Society, Washington, DC. Dear Sirs: This letter to each member of the Council of American Physical Society (CoAPS) is sent out of concern for your 11/19/95 statement CONSERVATION OF HELIUM and its background paper. As a cryogenic engineer, business manager, and consultant for 45 years in supply and use of helium, and a very early and continuous supporter of helium conservation, I was appalled by the CoAPS statement. The fear of complete loss of helium in 20 to 25 years is understandable, but it is somewhat naive. It indicates a serious lack of understanding of events of the past fifteen years that have led Congress to undertake its first effective revision of the Helium Act of 1960. I am writing you in hopes that you and your colleagues will reconsider your position and recognize the helium reform provision of the Budget Reconciliation Bill as a step toward optimum use of helium. It is important that you and other scientists realize that this legislation promotes use of otherwise wasting helium sources and does not threaten premature use of the government owned stored helium. It was arrived at with full knowledge of the importance of a wide variety of helium dependent technologies for science as well as the general welfare. My credentials on this subject are these: I was Linde's principal investigator in its 1951 discovery of alternate layer super-insulations, created the basic design of all standard multi-shield vapor cooled liquid helium dewars, and was chief architect of the system of bulk liquid helium transport that now spans the globe. My baptism of fire in support of helium conservation was program chairman of a technical session of the Bureau of Mines sponsored ``Helium Centennial'' of 1968. Along with Dr. Ed Hammel, I wrote and spoke many times in support of helium conservation during the dark days of the 1970's. As an expert witness I participated in the decades long litigation regarding the value of helium in natural gas and the rights of land owners and gas producers to a proper share of that value. I have continued my interest in conservation through my retirement years, attending hearings and giving advice to interested parties as the present legislation developed. I remain involved in helium supply problems as a consultant to the United States Antarctic Program, regarding liquid helium supply to Astrophysics at the South Pole. I am scheduled to make my seventh trip there next week. The Background Paper, on which the CoAPS statement is based, contains many errors. The most critical of these is the seemingly innocuous statement that, ``Some 10% of the total U.S. helium extraction presently is performed by the Bureau of Mines''. This is completely false, as is also, ``the helium stored in Cliffside (field) has remained approximately constant at 32 Bcf''. In fact, all of the helium purified by the Bureau since 1980 has come from the Cliffside storage field, and the government owned helium in the field has been drawn down by nearly five billion cubic feet (5 Bcf) in the process. These actions have been the result of a bureaucratic policy directly at odds with the letter and spirit of the 1960 Act. The intent has been to ensure continuance of the bureaucrats' own jobs. legislation objective The prime objective of the current legislation is to eliminate the wasteful and unnecessary government helium refining activity. Private producers are able to provide this service with less than one fifth the personnel and at substantially lower cost. CoAPS says ``there is no objection to this feature of the Act''. Yet for ten years the sweet voice of reason had not been able to move this deeply entrenched anti-conservation cabal. What has brought us to bi-partisan support of both houses of Congress is right minded public ridicule. The caricature of conservation so presented has even moved the White House to support elimination of the Bureau of Mines refining operation. debt is real CoAPS also errs in stating that the so called debt incurred to purchase helium ``is purely illusory, any transfer of funds from one government agency to another neither reduces the national debt nor increases the deficit by a single penny''. Also at odds with the facts is the assertion that, ``the helium issue is muddled by claims that the sale is required to pay off the $1.4 Billion debt''. CoAPS has fallen for the bureaucrats' sham that the debt is internal to the government and has no intrinsic meaning. In fact, money to acquire helium for government storage was borrowed from world money markets by the Treasury. The 1960 Congress intended, and the Helium Act stated, that government helium was to be priced to repay borrowed funds, including compound interest. This was done to insure that stored helium would be priced high enough to avoid interference with helium extracted from current natural gas production. anti-conservation policy In spite of this clear directive, the Bureau helium management established a policy in 1979 in which the selling price would be held down so that as general inflation raised prices charged by private producers, the Bureau would sell below the market price. The managers claimed that as long as current costs were covered, it wasn't necessary to repay the purchase price and its associated interest because the debt was simply a paper transaction between two government departments. Pricing stored helium below the cost of extraction from natural gas produced for its fuel value is obviously contrary to conservation. The present legislation language is another attempt to insure that stored helium will command a price above the market for current extraction. The legislation places emphasis on retiring the debt because that is what motivates those interested in reducing the deficit. Simply to state that helium from storage must be priced above the market from current extraction doesn't win votes at this time. The ultimate effect will be the same, as long as the price is right. cost of saving more helium would be high CoAPS is correct in stating that the legislation makes no provision for saving helium that is now being wasted from currently produced natural gas. However, the potential for significant additional helium recovery is much smaller, and the cost of that recovery much larger, two to three times current costs, than implied by CoAPS statement. The reason for this is that the favorable streams are already being produced. Each of the original five conservation plants is extracting as much helium as possible from the gas available. In addition three new plants extracting from Hugoton field have come on stream since 1990. With all these plants extracting helium in 1994 the total U.S. output exceeded 4.1 Bcf, about 90% of the peak year 1967, although the output of high helium content natural gas was less than 70% of the 1967 rate. The remaining unprocessed streams tend to be smaller, depleting faster, and removed from the existing infrastructure. consumption growth is slowing CoAPS warns that ``present growth rate in demand for helium is about 10% per year'' which projected would exhaust U.S. helium rich reserves in 21 years. Alternatively, even without increasing helium demand the loss of unextracted helium from natural gas fuel demand would deplete U.S. gas fields in about the same time frame. In fact, sales growth began to fade in 1990, and since 1992 has leveled at 3.314 Bcf (Fy 1992), 3.313 (Fy 93), and 3.280 for (Fy 1994). This abrupt halt to the 10% growth rate has come from a combination of foreign production displacing some U.S. exports and increased user efficiency. foreign helium sources are significant CoAPS assert that ``helium rich fields are found only in the U.S. and to a small extent in Canada'', yet large scale foreign plants are producing in Poland, Russia, and Algeria with total capacity exceeding one billion cubic feet per year, about 25% of current U.S. capacity. Smaller plants have operated in Canada, Holland, France, China and India. reliquefaction and repurification increase use efficiency More important even than this large foreign supply is the growing user concern for efficiency. Once through then out (OTTO) use of purchased helium is being replaced by closed loops using reliquefiers and repurifiers. This allows application of helium dependent technology to expand without consuming more helium. Research in high temperature superconductivity shows promise of taking over much of today's low temperature superconducting applications. helium will be plentiful longer To sell the 1960 program, the Bureau of Mines predicted that helium could not be extracted from the Hugoton-Panhandle fields beyond 1985. Yet ten years later production remains at a high level and is now predicted to continue at least another ten to fifteen years. Natural gas has been produced from these fields throughout the past seventy five years, yet nearly every year there are additions to the remaining measured reserves that tend to delay the eventual abandonment. The Bureau of Mines information circular ``Helium Resources of the United States, 1973'' reported that 109.3 Bcf of helium @ >0.3% concentration was contained in the fifty year old, depleting natural gas fields of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. From 1973 to 1987, these fields produced natural gas containing 81.8 Bcf helium. However, in the 1987 circular, the Bureau reported that 73.4 Bcf remained in the proved reserves of those fields. There had been enough upward revision of the proved gas reserves to add over 50 Bcf of contained helium >0.3%. Between 1987 and 1989 gas production contained 9 Bcf helium, but reserve revisions added 11 Bcf. In the next two years gas production contained 10 Bcf and revisions added 9 Bcf. As of 1991, the latest available publication in this series, these old fields, after producing about 102 Bcf, still held about 80 Bcf of proved reserves for future use. Further additions are still possible, even probable. The resource is never the less finite, but the finite limit has not yet been identified. all gas from largest reserves is processed for helium Regarding helium loss in non-processed gas it is important to recognize that all of the gas from the Riley Ridge field in Wyoming (proved reserves of about 120 Bcf) is processed for helium extraction. This field, which supplies about one third of current pure helium sales, is being produced at a rate of only one per cent of its proved reserves per year. It is unlikely that this production rate will increase until the price of natural gas increases significantly. At current fuel prices, it is not possible to obtain an acceptable return on the huge investment required to upgrade this low Btu gas to pipeline quality. It may be decades before fuel demand reaches price levels that will encourage new processing capacity. Riley Ridge is likely to produce helium throughout most of the 21st century. nondepleting fields can provide for very distant future Beyond this, it is possible that a significant helium supply could be obtained from the proven gas fields that are not producing at all. The hydrocarbon fuel value of this gas is so low that it would barely provide energy for the processing plant. The Bureau of Mines has identified 85 billion cubic feet of helium in these non depleting sources, more than half of this is already owned by the United States government. Extracting helium as a primary rather than by- product will be expensive. However, the concentration is three orders of magnitude greater than in air, so it won't require even 0.1% of the nation's energy consumption. This helium source may well be available into the 22nd century. It is futile to make any more detailed predictions for such distant future times. Nearly every prediction that far into the future is bound to fail because we cannot even surmise what human society will be like in even very gross measures. It is entirely fair to say that the bleak picture presented by CoAPS is unlikely, and that it is quite likely that sufficient helium to meet all reasonable needs will be available as far into the future as anyone can foresee. I hope that you, as a member of CoAPS, can be open minded to the information I have presented. If you now have doubts about the CoAPS position, please consult with your colleagues and advise the Physical Society membership to have confidence that helium conservation is not in danger. If you want still more information on this subject, please call me at 914-354- 1908. My E-mail address is 9324@mne.com. By the time you receive this letter, I will probably be on my way to Antarctica. I am scheduled to return by February 19, 1996, and you can reach me then. If you have a compelling need to pick my brains before then try an E-mail to one of my colleagues in Antarctica, Mr. Jesse Alcorta. His E-mail address is ALCORTJE.MCMURDO@mcmurdo.gov. Very sincerely, Arthur Francis. Mr. Speaker, consideration of this bill requires some background. Let us begin with these questions. why is the u.s. government in the helium business? Helium is a gas whose unique physical properties make it irreplaceable in many high technology applications. As Government space exploration and defense programs expanded during the 1950's, Government scientists became convinced that demand for helium would outgrow supply. Natural gas was, and continues to be, the only economic source of helium and few natural gas streams contained a high enough concentration of helium to make extraction economically viable. If the helium is not extracted when the natural gas is produced, it is forever lost into the atmosphere. The use-it-or-lose-it dynamics of helium at the well-head lent a special sense of urgency to the perceived supply- demand imbalance. At congressional hearings held in 1960, mining experts reported that nearly 4 billion cubic feet of helium were being lost each year--about 10 times the then current consumption. A valuable, nonrenewable resource was apparently being wasted, threatening shortages in future decades when demand for helium was expected to be much larger. Against this backdrop, Congress passed the Helium Act of 1960. This act funded a Government program to extract crude helium from natural gas and store it in the Cliffside Field near Amarillo, TX. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Mines [USBM] entered into 22- year purchase agreements with four natural gas producers who built helium extraction facilities in the Hugoton-Panhandle Field area of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas and the USBM built a pipeline to carry its helium purchases to the Cliffside Field. The Helium Act also required that Federal agencies purchase their helium requirements from the USBM. To meet those requirements, the USBM constructed a helium purification facility near Amarillo, TX. A final objective of the Act was to foster the development of a private helium industry--presumably to allow the USBM to de-emphasize or discontinue its helium program as soon as it could prudently do so. By the time the Government terminated its helium purchase agreements in 1973, the USBM had accumulated roughly 35 billion cubic feet of helium. By most estimates, this represents a 100-year supply for U.S. Government customers, and roughly nine times the current annual worldwide demand. While the Government stopped purchasing additional helium in 1973, the remainder of the Government's helium program, including operation of its refining plant, management of the pipeline and storage system, and the sale of helium to Federal agencies has largely remained intact. Now, 23 years later--and 36 years after the Government's helium program was expanded, it is long since time to re-examine the USBM helium program. A vibrant private sector helium industry has emerged which now supplies over 90 percent of the world's total demand for helium. Additional capacity is available which would enable private industry to easily supply the entire demand, including the demand presently supplied by the USBM. Given the current emphasis on reinventing Government, the USBM's helium programs seems to provide an excellent opportunity to restructure or discontinue a Government program that no longer provides fair value to American taxpayers. why is helium a valuable resource? When we hear helium the first thoughts that come to mind are of Macy's parade, Mother's Day, and FTD's balloon bouquets. In actuality, helium touches us in our everyday lives. This rare element has unique properties that have allowed us to improve our quality of life. Every time you place a long distance call, you can be assured helium was used in the manufacture of the fiber optic cables used to transmit your voice. Advances in medical diagnostics have been accomplished through MRI units that achieve their high magnetic fields from superconductivity made possible by the cryogenic properties of liquid helium. The construction and fabrication industries use helium and helium mixes extensively in welding and metal fabrication. Deep sea divers in the offshore oil industry can be assured that they will not be crippled from the bends with the development of helium/oxygen breathing mixes. These are but a few of the many applications for which helium is used to improve our lives. New applications are being developed not only in high technology research such as super computer chips, but low technology industries as well. Worldwide consumption of helium increases on an average of 7-10 percent per year both from growth of current uses and development of new applications. This natural resource which has contributed much to our development as a technological leader is not unlimited. The United States has been fortunate to be endowed with concentrations of this element in select natural gas fields which have allowed for its exploitation. While helium is a non-renewable resource, produced only as a byproduct of natural production, depletion of these reserves is inevitable. The Federal helium reserve and conservation system, which are discussed in- depth in another paper, play an important role in preserving our independence as a technological leader. This reserve serves as an important insurance that we do not compromise our future for short-term fixes. The Federal reserve and conservation system were designed to encourage maximum extraction of helium from currently produced natural gas thereby ensuring the United States of a long term position in the development of applications dependent on the unique properties of this element. Is the Federal Helium Operation Efficient? The U.S. Bureau of Mines within the Department of the Interior operates the Federal Helium Program. Federal helium operations consist of: First, a plant to refine crude helium; second, an underground storage facility to store crude helium, and third, a pipeline to transport crude helium recovered from the source gas fields to the storage facility. Private sector helium-refining facilities are far more efficient than the Federal refinery. The Federal refining plant employs at least 80 people, while a private facility of equivalent production capacity employing only approximately 18 people can produce three times as much helium. This astonishing discrepancy in productivity is attributed in part to the outdated plant and equipment at the Federal facility. A recent study by the General Accounting Office concluded that the Federal refining facility is so outmoded that it would have only scrap value in the event of liquidation. Federal revenue from the sale of refined helium falls far short of Federal costs of helium production. In the market place, price is the most direct measure of efficiency. The current Federal price for refined helium is now $55 per MCF and generates revenue only sufficient to cover operational costs and a slight surplus. For instance, the Federal price does not include the cost of crude helium. The best estimate for assigning a unit value of the crude in the Federal reserve is to divide 32 BCF--total Federal reserves of crude--into $1.4 billion--total debt--to arrive at an approximate cost of $40 MCF. If the cost of this free crude were included, the Federal price would be $95 per MCF, which is hardly competitive with the private sector. Crude helium is free to the Bureau of Mines because the money borrowed from the taxpayer to buy the crude was never repaid. The Bureau of Mines hides the inefficiency of the refining operation by including unrelated revenue. When private producers extract crude helium from Federal property, they pay a royalty to the Bureau of Mines of approximately $5 million per year. This royalty income is unrelated to Federal helium operations, yet the Bureau of Mines uses the revenue stream to subsidize its refining operation. The Federal helium operation is the epitome of an inefficient, Federal program that continues to exist despite the absence of current need. The Department of the Interior entered into the helium business in 1960, when Federal helium requirements were projected to increase dramatically and no reliable sources of helium were available in the private sector. Today, the Federal Government's need constitutes only 10 percent of the total demand for helium, and a vigorous private sector could easily supply all Federal users at a competitive price. Who Uses the Helium Reserve? The 1960 Federal Helium Act has been successful in storing for the U.S. Government 32 billion cubic feet of crude helium--50 percent or greater helium content, the remainder nitrogen--in a partially depleted natural gas field near Amarillo, TX, called the Cliffside Field. A pipeline system is used to transport crude helium to storage. It is operated by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, and is also used by private industry to store any crude helium that is not required to meet market demand. Helium is being extracted by private industry plants from natural gas going to meet the energy demand of U.S. households and industry. A portion of the private crude helium is being stored in the Cliffside Field under USBM supervision. Does the U.S. Government need a crude helium reserve? Worldwide helium demand from 1972 to 1992 had a growth rate of 9.3 percent per year and now exceeds 3 billion cubic feet per year. Although supply currently exceeds demand current helium bearing natural gas being produced for market will soon be depleted. Conservative U.S. Government estimates forecast that U.S. helium demand will exceed supply between 2001 and 2004. The real value of the 32 billion cubic feet will be its availability to the U.S. economy when the extractable helium is not adequate to supply demand. Although the U.S. Government's helium reserve will be very valuable once U.S. reserves of helium-bearing natural gas are depleted, the current market value of the crude helium reserve is far lower than some of the estimates that have been quoted by various uninformed sources. It would be totally unrealistic to expect to sell more than a small fraction of the reserve for prices approaching current market value. If the U.S. Government were to attempt to dispose of the entire reserve--nine times annual worldwide demand--over a short period of time, it would realize only pennies on the dollar and severely depress private industry prices for crude helium. Any short-term sales of crude helium into a depressed market will be at the taxpayers expense. By 2005 the helium reserve will become very valuable--so valuable it will be considered irreplaceable for the smooth functioning of our economy and then USBM sales will be at prices consistent with the helium reserve's true value. can the government sell crude helium without disrupting the private helium industry? The world market for refined helium is just over 3 billion cubic feet per year. Private refiner/marketers of helium are fully capable of supplying this demand for the foreseeable future. In addition, new helium production and refining capacity is coming into service will provide an abundant supply to satisfy an estimated growth in demand of 7-10 percent per year for the next 5 years. The Government refines helium from crude helium which is held in long-term storage and sells it on the market in competition with helium from current production. Selling crude helium from the Federal helium reserve will create an oversupply of helium. An over supply of helium will push prices down making further investment to recover helium from current natural gas production less likely. Government sales of helium at below market prices is dumping a valuable and depleting commodity. The Cliffside Field is the only economically feasible storage capacity for crude helium--50 percent or greater helium, the remainder nitrogen. The Federal helium reserve has held this crude helium since the 1960's. The Cliffside Field which contains the Federal helium reserve also serves private sector helium producers as the only commercially storage site for private sector crude helium. A fee is paid to the Bureau of Mines for use of the pipeline and storage capacity. The natural gas from helium rich gas fields will continue to be produced as a fuel even if the helium is not recovered. This helium will be lost forever. Any sale of Government helium will displace helium from current recovery or production plants. Therefore, Government sales of refined and/or crude helium to meet current demand are not needed, will be disruptive and will waste helium by reducing its recovery from helium bearing natural gas currently going to market. should crude helium be sold anyway, to raise revenue? This is a terrible idea. The Congressional Budget Office seemingly will not credit helium sales for deficit reduction purposes. Moreover, crude helium sales to raise cash now would undermine the long term value of the reserve, because helium will continue to increase in value. The fact is, helium sales into the private market cost more than they gain. can the $1.4 billion helium debt be repaid? Back in 1960, Congress recognized that helium was essential for such agencies as NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission. It passed a law creating the Federal helium activity to ensure helium supplies to Federal users. Given that the nascent private helium industry could not then be expected to meet Government demand, Congress authorized the Department of Interior to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars to set itself up in the helium business, which included creating a stockpile or reserve. The Treasury Department handled the borrowing. Mindful that Government agencies need discipline to return money to the taxpayers, Congress directed that the incurred debt be amortized and be paid in full by 1985. A final deadline of 1995 was mandated. Revenue to service the debt would come from sales of helium. Incredulously, some 36 years later not only has the principal on the debt not been repaid but neither has any of the interest. This indebtedness has now accrued to $1.4 billion. Some in the Government attest that this billion dollar debt is not real. Since it is owned by one Government agency to another Government agency it can be forgiven without ill consequences. Yet, every week at the Treasury's auction of government securities this debt is rolled over. It has been rolling over every week now since the sixties--piling up interest accumulation. Can the taxpayers ever realistically expect repayment of this debt? The answer is ``yes''. Had the Interior Department, U.S. Bureau of Mines, carried out Congress' mandate to amortize the debt, this question would not be asked today. The Department, however, chose not to employ a rational pricing policy that would have recovered this money. Instead of slowly increasing the price of helium to keep pace with inflation, it opted to simply freeze the price to its customers. It stayed nearly frozen for over 20 years! The Interior Department should initiate a realistic pricing structure sufficient to start amortizing this debt. It may take another 30 years to pay it off, but at least taxpayers eventually could be made whole. The worst thing the Government can do now is simply to forgive this debt. It would not only reward a bureaucracy for shunning a congressional mandate, but more importantly it would forever remove the discipline the Department needs to avoid wasting this scarce, valuable element. Helium is wasted by selling it too cheaply. Cheap Government sales discourage gas producers from extracting crude helium from current natural gas production. When it wishes to refine crude helium the Department simply pulls crude helium from its stockpile. Helium refined from current gas production ensures that it is priced to market value. why does the federal helium program want to undercut private industry? There have been several proposals made to reform the Helium Program operated by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Mines. Some of these proposals would enable the USBM to use the crude helium purchased and stored with tax-payer dollars as a free feed stock for their helium plant. The refined helium that the Government produces from this free feed stock could then be sold at prices below those charged by the industry, which does not have access to a free feed stock. Current proposals to forgive the helium fund debt would free the USBM to greatly increase their sales into the private sector. Sales of USBM helium into the private sector enable the USBM to spread their high operating and administration costs over a larger volume. This, coupled with the free feed stock discussed above, helps hide the inefficiency of their operation. As Federal research and defense budgets have been reduced, the demand by Government agencies for helium has declined. This has left the USBM with a need to increase their sales of helium into the private sector in order to keep their inefficiency from pricing them out of the business entirely. No consideration is given to the fact that such sales disrupt the normal function of the private helium market and result in the waste of helium, and lost or reduced income tax and royalty payments to the Federal Government. The USBM's stated policy has been to discourage the sale of Federal helium into the private sector, which according to their Annual Reports to Congress have been very limited. However, the DOI Inspector General reported that during the period from 1989 through 1990 when the USBM reported sales of only 2 million standard cubic feet of helium, 0.3 percent of their total sales, into the private sector, it actually sold 146 million standard cubic feet, 20 percent of their total sales. Their regulations required a surcharge on sales to private customers, which was almost never collected. This problem largely disappeared in 1991 when the Director of the USBM increased the USBM helium price and removed the incentive to divert helium intended for Federal use to private use. Now, the USBM is proposing to reduce their price and this diversion of helium into the private sector, whether officially encouraged or not, will return. what is the legitimate role for the federal government concerning helium? Why is helium a valuable resource? Helium's unique physical properties are critical in many high technology applications, such as manufacturing fiber optic cable, enhancing magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] capability, providing an environment for superconductivity, and industrial welding and fabrication. For most uses of helium, no substitute exists. Helium is a byproduct of the extraction of natural gas from certain helium-rich fields. If not captured when the natural gas is extracted, the helium will be vented and lost forever. Why is the Federal Government in the helium business? Congress passed the Helium Act Amendments of 1960 to ensure that sufficient amounts of helium would be extracted and refined to meet the Federal Government's expanding needs for space and defense programs. Also, the act was enacted to foster the creation of a competitive private industry, which was in its infancy in 1960. Pursuant to this Act, the Bureau of Mines within the Department of Interior now operates the Federal Helium Program, which consists of: an underground facility to store crude helium; a pipeline to transport the crude helium from the field to the storage facility and a plant to refine--purify--crude helium. The Federal refinery, which sells principally to Federal customers, provides 10 percent of the refined helium in the U.S. market. Is the Federal Helium Program efficient? The Federal helium operation is the epitome of an inefficient Federal program that continues despite the absence of a current need. For example, the Federal refinery employs at least 80 people, while a typical private facility can produce at least three times as much helium with no more than 18 people. Moreover, net receipts from the sale of helium to Federal users, are vastly overstated because the Federal refinery does not include the cost of crude helium in its price for refined helium. Who needs the helium reserve? The Federal Government owns approximately 32 billion cubic feet of crude helium, which is currently stored in the underground facility. These reserves represent an investment that will pay dividends when current demand for helium exceeds current supply. U.S. production capacity may well be insufficient to meet demand as early as the year 2001. Can the $1.4 billion helium debt be repaid? Congress originally authorized the Interior Department to borrow up to $250 million to enter the helium business and stockpile crude helium. The Bureau of Mines' sales of refined helium were supposed to generate sufficient revenue to return this money to the Treasury, but the outstanding principal and interest now amount to approximately $1.4 billion. By pricing helium to account for the debt, the Bureau of Mines could repay the debt over several years and ensure that any helium sold will yield the highest possible return to the taxpayer. Can the Federal Government sell crude helium without disrupting the private helium industry? The potential adverse affects of selling too much Federal crude helium are significant. Government sales will depress private production of helium, because less helium will be captured from current gas production. This will mean more private needs being met by Government sales. As a result, some helium would be lost forever. Any attempt to sell helium just to raise Federal revenue will likely result in below market pricing due to excess supply and, consequently, a poor return on the taxpayers' original investment. Moreover, there is no fiscal imperative to sell crude helium, because the Congressional Budget Office has advised that sales of crude helium from the reserve are asset sales and, therefore, provide no revenue for deficit reduction. How should the Federal helium activity be reformed? Unless Congress reforms the Federal Helium Program, the Department of Interior will continue to be the subject of criticism. Since a vigorous, competitive private sector helium industry now exists, the Federal Government no longer needs to take an active role in the business. For all of these reasons, Congress should enact H.R. 3008, which will: first, require the Bureau of Mines to discontinue the processing and sale of refined helium; second, preclude the sale of crude helium by the Bureau of Mines until current production of helium no longer satisfies current demand; and third, eventually repay the helium debt over two decades with revenue generated from the sale of crude helium, when market circumstances merit its release. Mr. Speaker, I ask that the following letter of support for H.R. 3008 be included at this point in the Record. National Taxpayers Union, April 29, 1996. Hon. Christopher Cox, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Cox: The 300,000-member National Taxpayers Union strongly supports your legislation, H.R. 3008, the Helium Privatization Act. Passage of the Helium Privatization Act is long overdue. For several years now, the National Helium Reserve has served as one of the most glaring examples of our government's inability to rid itself of obsolete, low-priority spending programs. This stark symbolism seems to have no end, as the New York Times reported that the Reserve was operating even during last year's federal shutdown, when thousands of other federal employees were classified as ``non-essential.'' Conceived in 1925 to prepare for an outbreak of blimp warfare, the National Helium Reserve certainly fits the description ``non-essential.'' Today the program costs taxpayers millions per year to staff and maintain, plus millions more due to mandated purchases by government agencies at inflated prices. Any proceeds from helium sales to outside customers must be weighed against the costs of the $1.4 billion in debt the agency has incurred during its existence. Meanwhile, private helium producers have created an adequate and efficient market that could easily sustain the needs of both government and industry for the foreseeable future in the absence of a federal program. Your legislation resists simplistic, headline-grabbing approaches by providing a rational, methodical timetable for privatization of the National Helium Reserve. The bill will ensure a smooth transition to an all-private helium market system as well as save taxpayers $9 million annually. The Reserve's refining and marketing activities would cease, and its stocks would be liquidated so as to provide the best return for taxpayers who have continued to fund this boondoggle. The nation's taxpayers expect and deserve a visible commitment from their elected officials to reduce wasteful spending. If Congress cannot muster the political will to eliminate an obvious target such as the National Helium Reserve, its credibility on tough deficit reduction issues such as entitlement reform could suffer. Accordingly, National Taxpayers Union's staff stands ready to assist your effort to privatize the National Helium Reserve, and to that end we urge your colleagues to work for swift passage of H.R. 3008, the Helium Privatization Act. Sincerely, David Keating, Executive Vice President.

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, during his recent circumnavigation of the planet, President Clinton told the G-7 summit leaders that they should join with him in urging Russia to put the squeeze on Iranian mullahs who are shipping arms, in particular shipping arms to the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. While the President was calling on our allies to pressure Iran, and while the President and the Clinton administration were calling the Iranian terrorists, quote, ``the main source of international terrorism,'' and while publicly condemning Iran's shipment of arms to the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, Bill Clinton was secretly and simultaneously conniving at even bigger Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia. Let us look at the history of this. On May 30, 1992, the United States imposed an arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia. The United States supported it, and when spy photographs showed Iranian 747's unloading illegal arms shipments in Zagreb, our State Department told us and told the world that we raised hell. That was the United States' policy that candidate Bill Clinton opposed. Candidate Bill Clinton said he supported lifting the arms embargo in Bosnia, not so that Iran could sell weapons to the Bosnian Moslems, but rather so they could receive support from United States allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As President, he promised when he was a candidate, he would lift the unfair United Nations arms embargo against Bosnia. But once in office, Bill Clinton completely changed his mind. He broke that pledge, broke that promise, and opposed lifting the arms embargo. He reversed his position because, he said, it would be wrong for any international arms shipments to go to Bosnia. It would ``Convert a complex ethnic war into an American responsibility. The United States must, therefore, oppose any international arms shipments to Bosnia.'' The Congress, however, voted to lift the arms embargo and sent the President a bill. It was not quite unanimous, but it was hugely bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate sent the President a bill so that we could, through our allies, help the Bosnian Moslems to defend themselves. The President vetoed that bill. He said nobody, not Turkey, not Saudi Arabia, none of our friends, least of all the United States of America, could help arm the Bosnian Moslems. The President assured not only Congress, but the American people and allies, like Britain and France, that he was staunchly opposed to lifting the arms embargo. And without telling even our own Joint Chiefs of Staff, it now develops the President secretly let it be known in Iran that the United States would not oppose huge, illegal arms shipments to the Bosnian Moslems. Huge quantities of weapons, accompanied by Iranian intelligence agents and mujahedin rebels, were thus shipped into Bosnia, by a regime that the Clinton administration publicly was branding as the financier, the armorer, the trainer, the safe haven, and inspiration for terrorists. These are the people that the secret Clinton policy, that Bill Clinton himself, secretly was introducing to Europe. As the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense was using those exact words I just quoted, the financier, armorer, trainer, safe haven, and inspiration for terrorists, the description of Iran, he was using those exact same words in his testimony to Congress. His boss in the White House, Bill Clinton, knew that up to eight cargo jets each month were taking off with Iranian arms bound for Bosnia. There can be no question that this was duplicitous. Right now congressional committees are preparing to investigate this sordid matter, to determine whether laws were broken governing illegal covert operations and governing failure to report truthfully to the Congress. But while it remains to be seen whether and, if so, which laws were broken, there is no question that the President broke his word to this Congress and to the American people. There can be no question that the President broke his word to France and to England. In briefs prepared for John Major and Jacques Chirac at the G-7 Summit, unknown to the President, they had incontrovertible proof that the President had lied publicly to them. It is incumbent upon this Congress to take this matter with the utmost gravity and to investigate it so that we can restore the good word of the American people around the world.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with my colleagues some words that come from a 67-year-old woman who works at the minimum wage in Santa Ana, CA: Dear Congressman--she wrote me recently--I strongly advise you not to raise the minimum wage. In my working career, I have had a lot of under, slightly over and straight minimum wage jobs. As a single parent, I managed to raise my son without any handout from the government. Although raising the minimum wage may should like a great humanitarian idea, it really isn't. In the past every time minimum wages were raised, the entire national work force, plus welfare recipients, also demanded and received raises. The cost of goods and services rose to meet the higher cost of labor, and you forced me to work a lot of overtime to maintain the same buying power I had before my ``generous'' raise. I am now 67 years old and consider myself extremely lucky to have an employer willing to hire elderly people like myself. My employer is a small businessman. Recently because of the economy he was forced to raise his prices and cut his overhead just to stay in business. I took a Small Business Administration class in college, and I know that he has to match my Social Security payments, pay higher State disability and workers compensation. He and others like him will have no alternative but to close their doors and I will be unemployed. When I lose my job, because my employer can no longer afford to stay in business, what is the government going to do about me, someone who is willing to work? How is the government going to help support me? Who is going to pay for this? Very truly yours, Joanna B. Menser, Santa Ana, CA. That is a personal story, but how about the big picture? How about macroeconomics, and how about the views of such institutional stalwarts of the liberal point of view as the New York Times? Some time ago the New York Times ran an editorial on the minimum wage. The headline was, the right minimum wage, zero. By that the New York Times did not mean that people should actually work for nothing. Rather, what they meant is that wages, the cost and the price of labor should be determined in a free market and in fact no one should be held to a so-called minimum wage but, rather, everyone should have the opportunity to make an increasing wage in return for higher skills and higher productivity. Let me read from that editorial in the New York Times which was titled, ``The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.'' ``Anyone working in America,'' the New York Times says, ``surely deserves a better living standard than can be managed on the minimum wage.'' I think we can all agree with that. But there is a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed. Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price poor working people out of the job market, people like Joanna Menser, whose remarks we just heard. ``An increase in the minimum wage,'' the New York Times wrote in their editorial, ``would increase unemployment.'' Let me repeat this line from the New York times editorial: ``An increase in the minimum wage would increase unemployment, raise the legal minimum price of labor above the productivity of the least skilled worker, and fewer will be hired.'' ``If a higher minimum wage means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals,'' the New York Times asked. ``Those at greatest risk from a higher minimum wage would be young poor workers who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.'' They conclude their editorial in the New York Times as follows: ``The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable, and fundamentally flawed.'' This is the New York Times now. This is not Congressman Chris Cox from California. ``The idea of using a minimum wage to overcome poverty is old, honorable, and fundamentally flawed. It's time to put this hoary debate behind us and find a better way to improve the lives of people who work very hard for very little.'' Finally, the New York Times of Friday, April 19, just last Friday, is worth noticing here on the floor in this debate among our colleagues. Three factoids from the New York Times, Friday April 19, 1996, I commend to all of my colleagues: Number of times in 1993 and 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress, that President Clinton mentioned in public his advocacy of a minimum wage increase: zero. Number of times he has done so in 1995 and 1996, when Republicans have controlled Congress, 47. Number of congressional hearings Democrats held on the minimum wage in 1993 and 1994: zero.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. William Quesenberry of Coral Gables, FL. Bill, a graduate of Shenandoah Junior High and Miami Senior High, first met Mary Belle Gardner when she was a wintertime resident of Miami Beach. Bill courted Mary Belle throughout high school and his days at the University of the South at Sewanee, TN. On April 13, 1946, Bill and Mary Belle were married on a beautiful, sunny day in Nashville, TN. After college, Bill flew in World War II as a naval aviator. Upon returning from the war, Bill followed his father's footsteps into the wholesale grocery business. As a wholesale grocer, Bill provided consumers with a wide variety of products and competitive retail prices. Bill and Mary Belle share a joy of traveling that has led them across the globe. Their sense of adventure has taken them to the frozen land of Antarctica, a far cry from their home in sunny Coral Gables, and even beneath the surface of the sea itself--Bill and Mary Belle are accomplished scuba drivers and snorkelers. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of their children and grandchildren as well as their many friends, I wish Bill and Mary Belle a happy golden wedding anniversary in the hopes of many more to come.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, too often the taxpayer is at the mercy of the IRS, and the whole purpose of this bill is to try to set that right, at least a little bit. Included in this Taxpayer Bill of Rights II is the Fast and Efficient Tax Filing Act, and I want to thank the Members that worked on Ways and Means, in particular my colleague the gentlewoman from Connecticut, Nancy Johnson, and my colleague from California for including this in the legislation, so thank you, Mr. Matsui, as well. The Fast and Efficient Tax Filing Act is going to make at least one area of the Internal Revenue Code a little more user friendly. Many of you may have at one time in your lives stood in line for an IRS Postal Service postmark to mail your tax return on April 15. Turns out that in order to use this rule, the Postal Service must be the form of delivery. If on the morning of April 15 you send it Federal Express, UPS, or some overnight delivery, and it gets there the next day, that is not good enough. If you put it in the mailbox and it gets postmarked, or if you stand in line and get that receipt from the Postal Service, even though the IRS does not get it for a week, then you can use the rule. Both taxpayers and the IRS are being cheated under the current system. As a result of the Fast and Efficient Tax Filing Act, no more midnight waits at the post office; send it Fed Ex, call 1-800 pickup or DHL, or any of the competitors that we have that operate in America to deliver things efficiently throughout the rest of our economy. Next year you will be able to do that as a result of the passage of this bill. So I want to congratulate once again my colleagues, the gentleman from California [Mr. Matsui] and the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Johnson], for including this in a wonderful bill. The IRS is going to get returns faster. Our constituents will not stand in line. At least this one area of our onerous Tax Code will have a modicum of common sense.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, Earth Day is coming, and if we are serious about protecting the planet, we are going to have to work together as Democrats and Republicans, as Americans and as citizens of this planet Earth to achieve the results that we all say that we are in favor of. It is not going to work to say Republicans or Democrats, this and that. We have 60 Superfund sites where work has stopped. We have some 2,000 Superfund sites, 1,300 of which we have not even gotten to. If we are serious about this, we will stop spending billions of dollars, $5 billion out of the last $15 billion, on nothing but litigation and bureaucracy. Superfund reform is bipartisan. Republicans favor it, Democrats favor it, and we need to pass it if we are serious about cleaning up toxic waste sites. If we are serious about protecting our rain forests and our savannas, then perhaps you will wish to sponsor the Rain Forest and Savanna Protection Act that I will soon be introducing, that will condition World Bank, IMF, bilateral, and multilateral foreign aid to countries that ought to be responsible for protecting our rain forests and savannas on sound environmental stewardship.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, in Bill Clinton's first term, he and the liberals who then controlled the Congress passed and signed into law the largest tax increase in American history. Since that time, we have still had no relief. It is April 15 today, and many people feel this pain. The President, Bill Clinton, vetoed the middle class tax cut passed by the new Congress, and as a result, even though last year the gross domestic product, the measure of our economy, grew by only 2 percent, individual income taxes collected by the Federal Government grew 8.5 percent. Taxes are growing and growing inexorably, year in and year out. Today, the average American has to spend 3 hours out of an 8-hour day working just to pay taxes. Ask yourself this question: How much do you spend in total on your home mortgage, on your rent, on your electricity, on your telephone? How much do you spend on your suits and your dresses and your other clothes? How much do you spend on restaurants and groceries? Over the whole year, add all of those things up, and if you are like the average American, whether you are rich or not, even if you are just a working American, you pay more in taxes than you pay on all of these things, food, clothing and shelter, combined; 35 percent more in taxes. It has not always been this way. Our taxes have been growing at an amazing rate just within our lifetimes. Many people here are veterans of World War II. If you are not a veteran of World War II, almost certainly your father is. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, only one out of every nine Americans even had to file an income tax return. That is the America our parents knew. I am 43 years old. When I was a kid growing up in the Midwest, the average American family like mine paid income tax at a rate of 3 percent. Today, April 15, 1996, most of our constituents can only pine for such days as their own rate of tax has grown more than 1,000 percent. While the tax burden on ordinary Americans has been growing and growing over the last 40 years of liberal control of the Congress, so, too, has runaway deficit spending. All these higher taxes have not balanced the budget. That is for sure. They have only promised that we will have more spending. They have provided an excuse to spend still more. In fact, according to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, throughout the postwar period every dollar in higher taxes has provided an excuse for $1.59 in higher spending. In other words, the higher the taxes, the higher the spending. To rein in higher spending, this House has given two-thirds approval to a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. But if we are going to amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget and the supermajority vote to break that budget, then we must also take care that this, the balanced budget amendment, does not provide a new excuse, a constitutional justification, to raise taxes. Colleagues, our taxes are too high. Spending is too high. Those who contend otherwise or who say that merely greater institutional will is necessary stand athwart 40 years of liberal Congressional history. For once in 40 years, liberals do not control this body. For once, we have the chance to add a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. And for once we have a chance to add a tax limitation amendment to the Constitution at the same time. For once, let us do the right thing. Let us do the right thing for our country, for our children, and for our grandchildren, and vote ``aye'' on the tax limitation amendment later this evening.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, not long ago we read about an arson that was committed at the DuPont Plaza Hotel, Puerto Rico. The place burned down, but it was an arson, so naturally the lawyers descended on the scene, and they did not sue the arsonist. They sued every manufacturer of anything that was contained in the hotel. They sued the manufacturer of the drapes and the beddings. They sued the manufacturer even of the casino dice. The kind of feeding frenzy that occurs at the filing of these lawsuits and the attempt to get everyone to settle is really best described as extortion. The people that are getting extorted in the first instance of course are all the people who are being made to pay for something that they did not do. But in the end, the people who are being made to pay are all of our constituents; in fact, all of us. Mr. Speaker, we pay more for things like our home insurance. We pay more for things like a new computer or even or common stepladder. We pay more certainly for our car insurance. All of these things are taxed by an unfair tort system that right now, because of excesses, not because of the substance of justice that we all want to preserve but because of excesses, has turned our civil justice system into a great wheel or fortune lottery. In 1987, my home State of California was home to 107,000 lawyers. Now, we had some rough years for our State's economy thereafter, but over the next 5 years, while other things were suffering, the legal industry did quite nicely, thank you. California gained 28,000 lawyers on top of the 107,000 for an increase of more than 25 percent. Today, there are more than 143,000 lawyers in California. Few, if any industries in California, in our State, can claim that kind of growth rate. As fast as the number of lawyers has been growing, legal fees, the revenues of the legal industry, have been growing faster still. In 1987, the California legal industry, lawyers' fees, took in $10.4 billion, or should we say took out from the economy $10.4 billion. But over the next 5 years, again when the economy was not doing that well, this amount grew to $16.3 billion. Those were the revenues of the legal industry, an increase of 57 percent. That $16.3 billion in revenues for the California legal industry is more than we spend on auto repairs, on funerals, on tanning salons, on 1-hour photo finishers, video tape rentals, detectives and armored car guards, bug exterminators, laundry, day care, shoe repairs, septic tank cleaning combined. Combine all of those industries in California, you do not get as much as we shell out for lawyers. There is an excess and we are trying to scale it back. Mr. Speaker, this is not loser pays. This is not some of the things that we watch our competitor nations around the world use to rein in these excesses. It is a very simple reform. It applies only to products and to charities, and it does not, I would like to make this very plain, cap punitive damages. It does not. Everybody is complaining oh, my gosh, there is a $250,000 cap on punitive damages, but there is not at all. The cap on punitive damages in this bill is infinity. That is why it is so bipartisan. That is why everyone is willing to sponsor it. Technically, what we have said is that you can get as punitive damages the greater of $250,000 or twice compensatory damages. Compensatory damages is a lawyer's word for things like pain and suffering, emotional distress, injured feelings, and there is no limit whatever on that. Infinity is the limit on such damages, so they claim the sky is the limit there and multiply it by two and that is the limit on punitive damages in this bill. This modest reform is supported, therefore, by Democrats and Republicans in both Chambers. It is as modest as we can get, and those who stand up and oppose it, I say, want no reform at all.

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. I thank the gentleman for pointing out that additional salutary impact of this legislation. There is something else in this legislation that I would like to highlight, in addition to the fact that it will solve the problems that we have all agreed need to be solved on preexisting conditions and on portability of coverage. That is reducing costs in the way that the Congressional Budget Office has told us is the most effective way possible. A September 1993 Office of Technology Assessment report said that a ceiling on noneconomic damages in medical lawsuits is the best way that we can get a grip on costs. Earlier in this session we have devoted our attention to this issue, and this Congress has, by overwhelming bipartisan vote, approved this kind of health care liability reform that, I want to point out, is also included in this bill and provides a very solid reason for voting for it. One of the key elements is what in California we call MICRA. It is health care cost control that we have had in place for many, many years. It was passed by a Democratic legislature, signed by a Democratic governor. It is bipartisan in this Congress, as well. I was very pleased to be the Member who offered this legislation in the first session of Congress and to see the strong bipartisan support that it won. We do have too many frivolous lawsuits, and, as a matter of fact, we can through this proven technique, already a law in California, control them for the benefit of every single individual insured person in America. Driving down health care costs this way is very, very important.

Mr. COX of California. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to thank my colleague from Vermont. My understanding of his remarks is that he is pleased with the bill because it includes provisions that will make sure that domestic violence is covered, that it is not excluded from our protections as a preexisting condition. That is my understanding. Is that correct?

Mr. COX of California

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to briefly ask the gentleman from Texas a question. That is, having listened to the comments of the gentleman from California [Mr. Dooley], with which I generally agree, that is, that kind immigration and illegal immigration are rather separate subjects and for various purposes deserve to be discussed separately. It is the case that this amendment merely splits the two so that they can be discussed separately, or is it rather the case that the effect of the amendment would be to strike out all of the parts of the bill for good that deal with legal immigration?

Mr. COX of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?