Larry Craig

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I was not referencing the money, and that is exactly what the Senator from California was talking about. What I was referencing are the rules and regulations, the web of regulations that causes the rebuilding of freeways at twice the expense it ought to cost or the replacing of a bridge in Monterey, CA, that costs twice as much because you have to do environmental impact statements and all of those kinds of things.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet at 9:30 A.M. on Tuesday, February 14, 1995, in open session, to receive testimony from the unified commanders on their military strategies, operational requirements, and the defense authorization request for fiscal year 1996, including the future years defense program.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be allowed to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 14, at 9:30 a.m., in SR-332, to discuss what regulatory reforms will help strengthen agriculture and agribusiness.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I will talk briefly this afternoon about the Reid amendment. As the Senator from Florida leaves, there is one comment I would like to make about a question that he asked the Senator from Nevada, and an ensuing dialog that they had that I felt was very insightful and extremely important as we address the issue of the inclusion of Social Security and its trust funds inside a balanced budget amendment, as the Senator from Nevada is proposing. After an analysis by the Senator from Florida--and I am only paraphrasing from memory--I believe he concluded that one of the real problems that put the Social Security trust funds at risk, based on the Social Security law that those reserves must be borrowed by the Federal Government and exclusively by the Federal Government, is that we had to stop the Federal Government or slow down the Federal Government's ability to borrow. I believe that is what he said. That is one of the great threats. And he is absolutely right. I agree with it totally. The debt of our Federal Government is the threat to Social Security. The borrowing of the Federal Government is the threat to Social Security--not a activities that this Congress has been involved in for the last few decades. The Senator from Florida is absolutely right--borrowing is the problem. It is what put Social Security at risk. It is what has consumed the trust funds, in a legal way, in an interest-bearing way. But when the day comes that those trust funds must yield for the purposes of paying the recipients of the Social Security system, what do we do? This is what Bob Myers said, who was the actuarial of Social Security: Stop the debt creation. That is exactly what a balanced budget amendment is intended to do. If we pass a balanced budget amendment and if we follow, then, the organic law of the land, the Senator from Florida's worries will begin to decrease. So what he is doing if he will support us in the balanced budget amendment is he will work to protect the Social Security system. You just do not set it off to the side and continue to borrow the money away from it without some day having to ask the citizens of this country to raise the FICA tax to such a level that it would be confiscatory to the average working person in this country. That is what puts Social Security at risk; not a balanced budget amendment in the year 2002, but an empty trust fund in the year 2020. It is the borrowing of our Federal Government that has created or is creating this risk. Gross interest is a product of the borrowing of the Federal Government. Right now, that gross interest figure is approaching one- fifth of our total spending. It is the second largest spending item in the Federal budget today. As debt grows, the logic is very simple: So does the interest charged grow. Therefore, I believe the logic that has been put forth by those who are the knowledgeable accountants and economists of the Social Security system is so sound, and that is that the debt is the threat, not the balanced budget amendment, but the very debt that we are all here trying to address and trying to resolve through this new mechanism, and that is the changing of the organic law of our land. If we do nothing, and my guess is that if we vote the balanced budget amendment down we will do nothing again, because this Congress has demonstrated no political will to be fiscally responsible. What we are trying to do is to rearrange our institutional biases toward a fiscally responsible attitude and away from the pressures of the special interest groups that force us to borrow or cause us to borrow on a regular basis that has created the debt structure that we have. So I am absolutely amazed when somebody wants to take Social Security and put it in the constitutional amendment and protect it in a way that does not allow the board of directors--the Congress of the United States--to manage it in a responsible way that will maintain its sovereignty and its solvency as we near those critical years of 2020 and 2030. According to the Kerrey-Danforth entitlement commission, we saw the figures of what would happen by the year 2030 in their own projections: Total Federal spending will top 37 percent of the gross domestic product, if we keep this Government on the auto pilot that it has been on for the past couple of decades; net interest will exceed 10 percent of the gross domestic product of our country, and the deficit will be 19 percent of the gross domestic product. It does not take a lot of good common sense to understand that if we do not deal with this issue now, Social Security is going to be in desperate trouble at that time. You can almost argue that all of the money of the Federal Government will go to interest on debt and Social Security payments. What about the pressures to fund some of the other programs? That is the risk to Social Security, not the debate on the floor today, not the idea of putting it in the amendment. We are not going to do that. The Congress knows better than to do that and to put it on auto pilot. It will not work. You cannot manage a system that must be managed as Social Security has been over the years. The statistics and the facts that bear up under the current spending structure and the nature in which Congress now utilizes by borrowing the reserves of the trust funds of Social Security tell us very clearly that it is the debt that is the threat, not an amendment to the Constitution. It is the amendment that we are debating today and will vote on, hopefully, this week or next that will begin to move the Social Security system into a much stabler and fiscally sound economic environment of the Federal budget. So I am always amazed at the idea that somehow we can wave magic wands. It does not work; it never has worked. What we are talking about here is a balanced budget amendment, and there is nothing magic about this. It just forces an entirely new responsibility and discipline. But the tough choices, as they have always been, will always be right here on the floor of the U.S. Senate and in all of the committees of authority and responsibility. We cannot pass go; there is no easy out. But for the first time, we will not be able to just simply shrug our shoulders and go borrow a little more money. We will have to make the tough decisions, and in making those, we will have stabilized the economy of our Government, our country and, in my opinion, strengthened the Social Security system tremendously. Mrs. FEINSTEIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. CRAIG. I appreciate the Senator from Illinois for yielding and I appreciate the question of the Senator from Florida. Last week, the Senator from California and I got involved in a similar discussion, what the committee report reflects is the current law. What the Senator is reading is the current law. The current law of the Social Security system requires that the Federal Government borrow the reserves. No one can borrow them. They cannot be invested outside of Government. What the Senator is reflecting, and what the committee report reflects, is the current law. I think it is clear in that report. What would have to happen for it to do as the Senator is suggesting might be done, we would have to go in and change the Social Security laws of our country. That is not what this Senate is about to do in any sense, nor does it want to. Ever since Social Security was created, the reserves that build up could only be loaned to the Federal Government, and because that is a current and constant process, that is what the report reflects. Now, outside borrowing by the sale of Government securities, is a separate and different item. Of course, this report reflects that kind of statement. That is what the report of the committee is intended to reflect. I believe if we read it we can read that into it. Clearly, that is what was intended. I have been involved with this for a long time. As we began to look at Social Security, we knew that the Social Security law was sovereign. Nobody wanted to change it. We did not have a majority vote to change it, did not want to. Nor could we, by crafting an amendment, change the nature of that statute. It was not intended.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. What is the order of business we are in at this time?

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I appreciate what the Senator from Mississippi has just spoken of, the issue of the State legislator beginning the movement to petition Congress. When I was a State senator in Idaho in the 1970's, I became involved in that very movement and actually brought a resolution before the State senate, and it passed the Idaho Legislature, to petition Congress for a balanced budget amendment because clearly at that time, at the State legislative level, as we were looking at what the Congress of the United States was doing and what the Federal Government was doing, we were growing increasingly fearful that debt would continue to mount and power of the Government at the central level in Washington would continue to grow, and it would, if you will, deny or weaken the ability of State legislatures and State governments to act responsibly. When I then came to Congress in 1980 and started serving in 1981, that movement was well underway. And as the Senator from Mississippi has just mentioned, we were at that time four States short of the necessary requirements under article V of the Constitution from petitioning and therefore forcing the Congress to bring forth a resolution convening a constitutional convention. Citizens across the country, though, at that time grew increasingly fearful of a constitutional convention, as to whether you could limit it to a single issue like a balanced budget amendment, and that if you opened up a constitutional convention and Congress in essence handed the power to craft a constitutional amendment to an autonomous body, we might see other issues come forth that many of us would not like. So that movement stalled out at about a remaining two States and it began to back off. Congresswoman Barbara Conable of New York at that time was a leader. I became a leader involved and traveled around to the States encouraging them to continue to do so, not because I wanted a constitutional convention but because I thought it was terribly important we show that the second portion of article V of the Constitution remains a viable power inside the Constitution but that the alternative--and that is the first portion of article V--would be that Congress can propose amendments to the citizens on the Constitution and that we were in essence the always-standing, always- in-power constitutional convention, that at any time with the necessary supermajority vote, the Congress itself could bring forth an amendment to be ratified by the States. I say to the Senator from Mississippi, as he well knows, that is exactly what we are doing at this time, and that is why some of us have worked as long as we have to assure that this process go forward and why we are so concerned today we do not put anything in the path of this amendment that could trip it up in what is, I believe, a constitutional responsibility on our part to provide a clean, simply directed amendment to the people. We have seen an amendment--and thank goodness just this week the Senate has denied it--that would have said prior to sending forth an amendment we have to do the following things. That is not what article V says. It says you put forth an amendment and it goes straight to the States because we can only propose. It is the States that have the responsibility, or in essence the citizens themselves, to ratify an amendment because the Constitution as the organic law of our land is the people's law. We operate under it. That is why we are here today and will be for the next week or so debating a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution because it is the adjusting, if you will, of the organic law of our land that governs us, that governs the central government, that controls the Congress of the United States, and it is the ability of the people to speak up. So what we are doing here is extending or offering to the people of this country the opportunity to speak on the issue of how the Federal Government manages its fiscal house and its budget. And I wish to thank the Senator from Mississippi for recognizing as he has that on all of these kinds of issues they really begin at the grassroots. It is the people at the very lowest level of our governments stepping forward and saying we believe the central government ought to change; it is doing things in an improper way, and the way we will change them is to adjust the Constitution of our country to cause them to act differently. That was back in the 1970's, and it has taken now over two decades to bring forth this issue to the point where it has now passed the House of Representatives and we are within weeks of voting on it here with a strong likelihood that it can pass the Congress of the United States and pass the Senate and it will go forth to the people. So those citizens of Mississippi, through their State legislators, will have an opportunity to decide how the central government of our country ought to be run in the area of its fiscal responsibilities and matters.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, it is fair and I believe proper that the Senate of the United States speak to the citizens of this country as to our intent about how we plan to handle Social Security as we move toward a balanced budget. Therefore, I strongly support the Dole motion and encourage all Senators to vote for it because it is the appropriate way to express our will and to direct the Budget Committee in its proceedings once we have sent a balanced budget amendment to the States for their consideration and, hopefully, their ratification. What is important is that it is separate and apart from the amendment itself because it expresses the will of Congress, and it does not clutter up the Constitution the way the Senator from Utah has so clearly spoken. It does not create the massive loophole that the Senator from Nevada is attempting to carve inside the Constitution that would allow future Congresses to drive ever-increasing social programs through the Social Security loophole and, in fact, potentially destroy the Social Security Program. The strength of the Social Security Program has never been the law itself. The strength of the Social Security Program is right here on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It is the obligation of every Senator to honor what we believe to be a commitment to the citizens of this country who pay into a supplemental income program as to our obligation to ensure that program remain sound and stable throughout all time. There is no statute in the Constitution today singling out any special program of Government guaranteeing to the citizens how that program will be operated for all time. The Constitution has been, and must remain, a code, a sense of principle and an organic act that says here is how the collective government of our country operates. It is then Government's responsibility and this Senate's responsibility, once we have passed legislation and created law as we did with the Social Security System, to honor the commitment of that law so spoken to the American people. Mr. President, the threat to Social Security is not the Senate of the United States. The threat to Social Security is the debt. It is the debt that is the threat. And if we fail to balance the Federal budget, Social Security will go down in 25 or 30 years. The obligations this Government will have will be so large that the tax increases that will be demanded to stabilize the system will be so large and overpowering that the average taxpayer will not be able to pay them, and by the Office of Management and Budget's own confession, 84 to 85 percent of the gross pay of the average worker out there in the future will have to go to the Government in taxes. You know what is going to happen, Mr. President, if that ever were to occur. They would look at me because, by then I would be on Social Security, and they would say, ``I am sorry, Larry, we cannot afford you because we cannot afford to pay our bills and put our kids through school and buy a home because you are asking too much of us for your own benefit.'' That is why this motion is important, to say that it is the sense of the Congress in directing the Budget Committee, as we move to balance the budget, to do so without increasing revenues or depleting the trust funds of Social Security. That is a clear intent, a clear expression of what this Senate will do. It is not unlike what the House did before they voted on the balanced budget amendment by a vote of over 418 to say to themselves and to the American people watching that they will not balance the Federal budget on the backs of the Social Security recipients. But what they did not do and what we must not do is to clutter up the Constitution of this country by creating political loopholes. The American people are already suspicious of us. They know that we craft laws and we create special exemptions and special and unique opportunities with inside the law. We must never do that within our Constitution. That is why the Dole motion is so important and why I urge all of my colleagues to vote in support of that motion.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that it be in order to vitiate the yeas and nays on the amendment numbered 237.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar item No. 20, S. 178, a bill to amend the Commodity Exchange Act to extend the authorization for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; that the bill be deemed read a third time, passed, and a motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be placed at the appropriate place in the Record. Mr. President, let me say this has been cleared by the minority.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, there others who are seeking time for morning business, including myself. How much more time does the Senator feel he needs?

Mr. CRAIG. All right. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be in morning business until 10:45 with 15 minutes allotted to the Senator from Delaware and 15 minutes allotted to the Senator from North Dakota, and the balance of the time for this side, until the hour of 10:45.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. I agree the Congress did that. But you and I both know that the Congress of the United States every year includes in the final budget of this country and the budget that you and I will decide in the coming months Social Security expenditures. We are allowed by the law and the Social Security law to make decisions on Social Security. The term ``off budget'' for Social Security is an accounting terminology that separates it from the general fund budget or, if you will, the all-inclusive Federal budget that we have been operating on since the Johnson years. The power authority is not something on whose budget we decide. That is decided by a separate board. It is only the amount of obligation of payment that power authority is tied to. So if I may politely say, you cannot compare an apple to an orange. And in this example, that is exactly what I believe you are attempting to do. They are uniquely different entities under the law and under the budget process of our Government.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, no program of the Federal Government is being exempted. These are not Federal programs. These are independent entities that are known as quasigovernmental because it took a Federal act to create them. They are not on budget. They have never been on budget. This is the same report language that was filed a year ago and 3 years ago as we worked this very issue. So I appreciate your concern because I, too, strongly believe exactly the way the Senator from California believes--that the trust fund of the Social Security system should never be used to balance the budget. I have one of these entities in my area known as the Bonneville Power Administration. We do not establish their budget here. You have never voted on it. Neither have I. They are a Federal power-marketing agency. They establish their budget just exactly the way the Senator from Illinois said--by rates, and by rate increases if they need to increase their budgets. They have but one obligation to the Senate and to the Government of our country, and that is to return a revenue, based on their debt obligation. That becomes part of this revenue flow that becomes part of the budget. That is not even like Social Security. Social Security does not return a revenue to the Government following an expenditure. It is a tax flowing in to service the obligations of Social Security and Social Security recipients. The Tennessee Valley Authority does not flow money to the Government for purposes of obligation other than debt structure, and they are not a part of the unified Federal budget. Simply are not and never have been.

Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, thank you. We can play semantics with the report language if you wish and we can ask a variety of questions of the report language. I do not dispute the legitimacy of asking the questions. The report language is not the amendment. What is in the amendment and which is key, and I think the Senator in searching for the Government programs that would meet the definition, needs to look at section 1 of the amendment. It says ``Total outlays for any fiscal year.'' That is the operative word, Senator. Now, the Senator used the example if my power authority, Bonneville, got in trouble, would we bail them out. I do not know. We would have to decide that at the time. That would become an outlay at that moment in time. We would have to fit that into the context of a balanced budget because we would decide collectively that maybe it was necessary to do it--it was going to damage the region. Your State of California buys a lot of power out of the Bonneville power grid. If the Bonneville power grid was going down, we might become allies. We would want to save it so that my State would not go dark and your State would not go dark. But the point is, does it become an outlay? That is all you and I for the purpose of a balanced budget amendment have a responsibility for. It is at this time not an outlay. TVA does not come to the Federal budget. It is not an outlay of the Federal budget. If it got in trouble--and I think your analogy is fair, as the Senator from Illinois mentioned the analogy of Chrysler and the New York City bailout. New York City is not an outlay today and should never appear on the budget, should not be considered. But if New York came, like they did years ago and said, ``We are near bankruptcy. Help us,'' they become an outlay. They become a part of the unified budgets of the Federal Government, and it is at that time that we would have to make a decision. So, whether the report language is right or wrong, the ultimate test and a legitimate question to ask, I sincerely believe, is what segments of the Federal Government manifest an outlay to the unified budget of the Federal Government? While we took Social Security off budget and away from the unified budget, which is merely an accounting word for total expenditure, total receipts, in the end we bring it back. We bring it back and we put it in to the total budget of the Federal Government, and you and I vote annually on the expenditures of Social Security. We do not on TVA, we do not on Bonneville Power, we do not in this operative section--not operative, but descriptive section. Report language is never operative. It is only descriptive. It expresses general intent. It is only at that point that I think your concern deserves an answer, and I would like to try to put a list together for you. But if you are basing it on your reason to vote because it is off, the test is: Does it manifest by its presence an outlay to the unified budget of the Federal Government? And the very simple answer to that is no, it does not. I thank the Senator from California for yielding.

Mr. CRAIG. If the Senator will yield.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, only briefly to respond to the Senator from California. She and I are clearly on the same wave length. We do not want to see the trust funds and the revenues that build up to support future generations Social Security checks used to balance the budget. The tragedy is today they are. Today the surpluses are spent through the general fund and notes are deposited in the trust funds, interest bearing notes. This is a requirement of the law, the law that created Social Security. That is what goes on today. So the Social Security stability, while there are revenues coming in in the form of taxes, has always been based on the willingness of the Congress of the United States, the Senator from California and the Senator from Idaho for assuring its stability because we, by voting every year to pass a unified Federal budget, vote on the expenditure of moneys from the trust fund to things other than Social Security because the money is borrowed from the trust fund and expended out through the general fund. That is part of the financing of our Government, whether you and I disagree with that or not. It is not a separate pool of money setting to the side bearing interest. It is working money and, of course, it comes in the form of Treasury notes and interest bearing at the time. That is how it works. I think that is a reasonably good description of how it works and certainly one that will not change. I think the argument that all of us have had is, if you are going to balance the budget, you look at all of the Federal budget, all of it that is currently inside the unified Federal budget and in the calculations that we make on an annual basis from a budgetary point of view. While the Senator from California has expressed her concerns here, let me close this thought by simply saying, what is now not currently on budget or a requirement that the Senator from California or the Senator from Idaho deal with it at all, unless it got in trouble, as she makes out, that would be then the point that we would be responsible for it, and it would fit under the definition and the clear examination of article I which says, ``total outlays.'' There is the key, total outlays for any fiscal year. Right now TVA is not an outlay nor are those other entities. Mr. President, one other item that I thought was interesting this afternoon in the debate and the discussion as it relates to the Senator from West Virginia when he was breaking out different portions of the budget and he was dealing with sections that talked about revenues and how we would handle them, it was interesting to me that he was only willing to deal with pieces and not the whole. It is most unfair, in my opinion, to examine the amendment in pieces and exclusively under a certain manner. Let me give an example of what I think I am concerned about when he said, ``The limit on debt of the United States held by the public shall not be increased, unless three- fifths'' vote. He talked about revenues and the ability to evaluate those and, again, it was an operative factor of three-fifths vote. We understand that the art of projecting revenue in a gross domestic product as large as the United States is not a perfect art, and while our very best minds at the Office of Management and Budget, or the Congressional Budget Office, or Treasury might come up with a fixed revenue for the year over which we budget, it would not be unreasonable, based on cyclical patterns, for that revenue to be off by $10, $12, $14, or $20 billion. The Senator from West Virginia is absolutely right. We are never accurate to within the cent or the dollar or even the hundreds of millions of dollars. But what it then says is that, by a three-fifths vote, other things are allowed to happen and that remains the key operative. What the process does is that it causes us for the first time to try to live within the revenue projection. And certainly the Senator from West Virginia, who for years has been chairman of the Appropriations Committee, knows that this Congress and probably few that he has ever been involved in ever consciously created a budget to live within the revenue projections. It was always take that revenue and borrow a heck of a lot more. Now what we are saying is that as we work over the next 7 years to bring this budget into balance, from that point forward we will live within the best guesstimates possible by the professionals, and we will project spending levels on an annualized basis on those projections, on those averages, on those summaries. And if we miss them, then through the implementing language and a new budget process that would be created growing out of this, we would deal with them. Would it be to lift the debt ceiling by three-fifths vote and move them into debt? Yes, that could be done. That would then clear out the budget for the year. Would it be to raise revenue to offset it? Yes, that could be done. Would it be possible to spin it into the next fiscal year as a debt to be paid immediately because of a projected surplus in the next year? Yes, that, too, could be done. This amendment does not restrict those kinds of actions. What it does say and what is important to say is you look at the total of the argument, read the whole amendment, do not examine the pieces. Put it all together, make it a whole body, make it a whole document because that is how we will all have to look at it and that is how we will have to operate as a Congress under the 28th amendment to the Constitution, the one that we are now debating. We will not operate exclusively by the pieces or the parts. It will be a whole document that will cause us to react that will create the implementing language which will be probably a new Budget Act and a new process. What it does disallow, and that is, of course, where this Congress has found itself in real trouble over the years, it disallows the ability to micromanage in a way that has created the kind of debt structure that we have. It simply puts us within parameters, very strict parameters, and it gives, I think, the American people for the first time a sense of confidence that we actually are trying to stay within our limits and balance the Federal budget. I would like to try to do that. I think most Americans want us to do that. I am privileged to be serving my 15th year in the U.S. Congress, and never in those 15 years has this Congress consciously tried to live within its revenue or live within a balanced budget. It always figures we will take what we can get and we will borrow the rest to meet our political desires and not our fiscal responsibility. Mr. SANTORUM addressed the Chair.

Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am glad the Senator found and brought that issue up, because it is critical only in the context of understanding how it fits. I say that as an individual who helped craft this amendment and believes in the logic and in the appropriateness of the words ``Everything that is in the general fund budget is on the table,'' and everything that the general fund budget and the Senate or the Congress of the United States have authority over in decisionmaking for the purposes of appropriations, allocation of resources, or the establishment of funding levels is on the table. The Tennessee Valley Authority, like other PMA's, or power management Authorities, are not on the Federal budget. They have a Federal obligation money that was used to finance them. But the Federal Government does not establish their budgets, nor does the Congress of the United States. And that is what is directed in this program. So it is not a loophole. Everything that is in the budget is on the table. This is a revenue source. It is the board of this particular PMA, or power management authority, that establishes their own budgets and they look at their obligation to the Federal Government as a debt payment obligation. They are not a part of general fund budgeting, nor can they either be called off budget, because they are a quasi- independent Federal agency non-tied to the general fund budget.

Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator from California yield?

Mr. CRAIG. Will the Senator from West Virginia yield?

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Montana.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, along with Senators Heflin, Murkowski, Gorton, Domenici, Burns, Packwood, Kempthorne, and a statement of support from the minority leader, Senator Daschle, I will, in the near future, introduce the Federal Lands Act Forest Health Amendments of 1995. Mr. President, for some time I have attempted, along with others, to bring to the attention of this Senate the serious deterioration of this country's forest lands from a variety of ills, including drought, insect and disease attacks, and natural wildfires. We have come to understand that these problems, in combination, affect millions of acres of Federal, State, and private forest lands, and they have advanced to a point that they simply demand the attention of this Congress. It should be no surprise to any of us. Numerous recent reports from the scientific community, one of them called ``Assessing Forest Ecosystem Health in the Inland West'' and the ``Report of the National Commission on Wildfires,'' predicted intense wildfire events as a consequence of the forest health problems that this legislation will speak to. Many believe these costly fires will continue, unless there is an aggressive action by man to work with Mother Nature in attempting to deal with this situation. Scientists and forest managers met in Sun Valley in my State in 1993, and warned us with a very terse message, that we had ``A brief window of opportunity, perhaps 15-30 years in length''--and in the life of a forest, that is but the blink of an eye--to reverse this very unnatural cycle of fire that we were moving into. And, of course, last summer, it was so vividly dramatized in the inland West, as 4 million acres of unhealthy timber burst into fire, killing people, destroying homes, destroying ecosystems and wildlife and damaging riparian areas, and at a cost of $1 billion to the Federal Government in its attempt to suppress these fires, when, watch the violence of the fires and the destruction that occurred. Do not be misled by those who proclaim that wildfire is beneficial to the environment because of a natural mosaic of vegetation that would be created. The 1994 fires were way outside the normal and the historic range. Damage to every component of the environment was so extensive that it will really cost us hundreds of years to begin to repair that kind of damage. A draft environmental impact statement just released by the Boise National Forest in my State documents long-term, severe damages to watersheds, soils, fisheries, and wildlife from last summer's fires that will be, as I mentioned, decades and decades and decades in repair. The only way we can deal with this serious problem is to develop and implement equally serious management strategies and allow our national forests our foresters in the scientific community to break the cycle of the forests that are in decline with this kind of mortality as a result of the disease, the insects, and the drought. My bill, titled the ``Federal Lands Act Forest Health Amendments of 1995,'' is an attempt to do just that. It is now gaining bipartisan support. We will want to move it very rapidly through the two committees of jurisdiction and bring it to the floor of this Senate for debate, while a similar bill will move in the House. This bill will set the management procedures in place to identify the highest priority forest health problem areas on the national forests, the public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the public domain wildlife refuges. Once the areas are identified, this bill requires the agencies to take aggressive action to restore forest health. Most notably, the legislation would relieve some of the procedural impediments which have tied the agencies' hands. Our aim will be to alter unhealthy forest vegetation through thinnings and other cultural practices so the forest more nearly conforms to the historic patterns which once prevailed. Once there, the forest ecosystem can be maintained through scientific management. I see this forest health legislation as a long-term solution to the problem at hand. Years of concentrated effort will be needed to treat millions of acres now in trouble and restore them to conditions which are within the expected natural patterns and cycles. Though our western forests are in particular crisis now, forest health problems have surfaced in southern forests as well as in the northeastern and Lakes States, and this legislation would be very useful in those circumstances. As with most difficult situations, there is an opportunity here. As forest health activities are implemented, benefits will be gained for fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, scenic values and for all components of the ecosystem. That is the end result we want. At the same time, the activities needed to accomplish that end will generate forest products, jobs, and economic returns to the local economies which have been badly hurt by the shrunken timber supply. We do not need to be risking lives and property fighting these unnatural wildfires. We don't need to be spending a billion dollars on fire suppression when we could be taking effective preventive action to reduce risk. We do not need to watch our natural resources go up in smoke when there is a critical need for wood fiber to sustain our industry and communities. Forest health crises are preventable, and I am committed to bringing solutions before the Congress. That is why I will introduce this legislation. Our time, our window of opportunity, as I mentioned, is very narrow. I hope that my colleagues will join with me in a serious effort at working with the Forest Service to resolve the crisis that our forests are now in. Yes, for the time being, we are receiving abnormally high moisture levels in the inland West. But still, over the long period of drought, the accumulated moisture continues to decline, and along with that is the direct decline of the forests' health. Clearly next year, we would set ourselves up for another summer of fire and destruction and, tragically, the possibility of life lost, the kind that we saw in Colorado, in my State of Idaho, in Oregon, in Montana, and certainly in Washington and California this past year. Something has to be done. I believe my legislation will start us in that direction. And it would be foolish for this Senate, this Congress, this administration to simply set idly by and say, ``Oh, but it is Mother Nature at her finest.'' It is Mother Nature at her worst, because part of the problem that we are dealing with is the result of our inability to manage fires over the years and our failure to recognize that there was a national ebb and flow of the ecosystem that we have severely damaged and it will take our work, our efforts, and our cooperation with Mother Nature to begin to right this process. So I hope my colleagues will join with me in this effort and become cosponsors of the legislation that we will be introducing.

Mr. CRAIG

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Utah for yielding. Let me express my thanks for the leadership that he and the Senator from Illinois have taken on this issue, along with myself and others, to bring to the floor and to build the consensus that is clearly here in a strong majority to pass a balanced budget amendment. Now, within a few moments, we will have a vote on the Daschle motion. We have been debating this amendment and the Daschle motion in part for a week and a half, without a vote. I think the American people expect Members to move in an expeditious fashion through this issue, to a time when we can vote up or down on it, and send it to them to make the decision. Article V of the Constitution is very clear. We have the right to propose amendments, and when we do, they must go straight to the States. In all fairness, the Daschle amendment has to be called not the right to know, but the right to stall, and stall and stall, and deny the American people the opportunity to express their will through their State legislators as to whether they want a balanced budget amendment, as to whether they want a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to be the 28th amendment to our Federal Constitution. So while Senator Exon or Senator Hollings may have offered similar amendments to the unfunded mandates issue, they were entirely different. That was a statute. That was an issue that can be changed year to year, day to day, as the Congress meets. This is an amendment to our Constitution. Nowhere has there ever been within the Constitution such a prescriptive process as so designed by the Senator from South Dakota. It is not the right to know, it is simply the right to stall, in an effort to defeat this amendment or to deny the American people the right to express their will. The Senator from Utah has made that evident time and time again. I have and our colleagues have joined Members on the floor to debate this issue. Certainly we are now at a point, within a few moments, of voting, the very first vote in over a week and a half, while the other body has already moved several other pieces of legislation. I am not at all convinced that just stalling and stalling and stalling, as has been proven here, is the way to solve this problem. Thorough debate is, and I am all for adequate and thorough debate on this issue. Now it is time to vote and move on to other portions of it in a timely fashion, and then allow govern, not the elite few. I yield back to the Senator from Utah.