Susan Collins

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 21, 1999 at 10 a.m. to hold a Markup.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be granted permission to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 21, for purposes of conducting a full committee hearing which is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. The purpose of this oversight hearing is to receive testimony on whether the United States has the natural gas supply and infrastructure necessary to meet projected demand.

Ms. COLLINS. 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 Wednesday, April 21, 1999. The purpose of this meeting will be to review the USDA Office of the Inspector General's report on crop insurance reform.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I do have some unanimous-consent requests that I would like to propound at the request of the leader.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination on the Executive Calendar, No. 36. I finally ask unanimous consent that the nomination be confirmed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, that any statements relating to the nomination be printed at the appropriate place in the Record, the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and that the Senate then return to legislative session.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I do want to inform my colleagues who are waiting to speak that it will not take me long to conclude these unanimous consent requests and that it will not preclude them from being able to deliver their remarks.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 83, S. 574.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed at the appropriate place in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Con. Res. 29, which is at the desk.

Ms. COLLINS. I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed at the appropriate place in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until 1 p.m. on Monday, April 26. I further ask that on Monday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved, and there then be a period of morning business until the hour of 3:30 p.m. with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each. I further ask unanimous consent that at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, the Senate resume the motion to proceed to S. 96, the Y2K legislation, and that there be 2 hours of debate equally divided in the usual form. I finally ask unanimous consent that the vote on invoking cloture on the motion to proceed occur at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, with the mandatory quorum waived.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise as an original cosponsor of the Education Flexibility Partnership Act to speak in support of the conference report on this important legislation designed to improve the quality of our children's education. This is a straightforward, bipartisan proposal with no budgetary impact. It is endorsed by the governors of all fifty states. It will give to every state the flexibility that twelve states have had for the last five years--flexibility that will allow states and communities to pursue innovative efforts for the improvement of K-12 education. We should approve the conference report and take an important first step toward returning the control of education to our states and local communities. Opponents of education flexibility claim that it reduces the accountability of the states and will divert federal funds away from programs that support low-income children. These arguments simply have no validity because of the safeguards we have written into the act. To be eligible to participate in Ed-Flex, a state must have made significant progress toward developing and implementing challenging standards for education content and performance for all of its students. Moreover, an Ed-Flex waiver can not exceed five years unless the Secretary of Education determines the waiver has been effective in assisting schools in implementing education reforms. It is not accountability that Ed-Flex eliminates; what Ed-Flex does away with is the direct federal control of local decisionmaking. The objectives of federal education funding remain the same--improve the performance of all students and all schools. Ed-Flex encourages and supports the states and local school districts in developing innovative new approaches to education reform and improvement. The intent of existing education programs is preserved while the administrative burden on the states and local communities is lessened. States and communities will be allowed to tailor these programs to fit local needs and conditions. In short, the legislation we are now considering recognizes that the people closest to our schools--our school board members, teachers, principals, and parents--are the best able to craft reforms that respond to local needs. As pleased as I am to support this conference report, I am very disappointed that it has eliminated the Senate's provision that would have afforded local schools the choice of using the funds appropriated for class-size reduction to pay for special education. Contrast the progressive objectives of the Ed-Flex bill with this decision. Some members insisted on placing new federal requirements on local schools through a new categorical program at the same time we are moving toward more local control through this bill. We need to move away from this ``Washington knows best'' approach. I am a strong supporter of public education and believe that the federal government should increase its support for our schools. It should realize this goal first by meeting its commitment to pay the federal share of special education, not by creating new Washington- driven programs. If we meet our obligation to pay forty percent of the cost of special education, millions of dollars of local education dollars will become available for the needs of education in every state and in every school district. These are dollars that can be spent on more teachers--or on school construction, drop-out prevention, after school programs, or on any other need a local school establishes as its priorities. Clearly, the Education Flexibility Partnership Act is only the starting point. We need to go much further in cutting the federal red tape that binds our local schools and hinders their ability to respond to the needs of their students. Giving schools greater flexibility must be a major priority as we proceed with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I plan to take another step in the direction of less federal control by introducing a bill to give small, rural schools greater flexibility in the way they use federal education funding. The federal government must help our local schools to improve their performance. But control and management from Washington are not what is needed. Extending the option of Ed-Flex to every state eases the federal hold on our local schools. I urge my colleagues to approve the conference report that is before us today and to move forward in supporting more local decision-making as we reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act later in this Congress.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, recently I introduced S. 684, the Fishermen's Bankruptcy Protection Act, a bill to provide family fishermen with the same protections and terms as those granted family farmers under Chapter 12 of our bankruptcy laws. I would like to take this opportunity to explain this legislation to my colleagues in anticipation of the Senate's upcoming debate on bankruptcy legislation. Like many Americans, I'm appalled by those who live beyond their means, and use the bankruptcy code as a tool to cure their self-induced financial ills. I have supported and will continue to support reasonable reforms to the bankruptcy code that ensure the responsible use of its provisions. All consumers bear the burden of irresponsible debtors who abuse the system. Therefore, I believe bankruptcy should remain a tool of last resort for those in severe financial distress. As those familiar with the bankruptcy code know, however, business reorganization in bankruptcy is a different creature than the forgiveness of debt traditionally associated with bankruptcy. Reorganization embodies the hope that by providing a business some relief, and allowing debt to be adjusted, the business will have an opportunity to get back on sound financial footing and thrive. In that vein, Chapter 12 was added to the bankruptcy code in 1986 by the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, to provide for bankruptcy reorganization of the family farm and to give family farmers a fighting chance to reorganize their debts and keep their land. To provide the fighting chance envisioned by the authors of Chapter 12, Congress provided a distinctive set of rules to govern effective reorganization of the family farm. In essence, Chapter 12 was a recognition of the unique situation of family-owned businesses and the enormous value of the family farmer to the American economy and to our cultural heritage. Chapter 12 was modeled on bankruptcy Chapter 13 which governs the reorganization of individual debt. However, to address the unique problems encountered by farmers, Chapter 12 provided for significant advantages over the standard Chapter 13 filer. These advantages include a longer period of time to file a plan for relief, greater flexibility for the debtor to modify the debts secured by their assets, and the alteration of the statutory time limit to repay secured debts. The Chapter 12 debtor is also given the freedom to sell off parts of his or her property as part of a reorganization plan. Unlike Chapter 13 which applies solely to individuals, Chapter 12 can apply to individuals, partnerships or corporations which fall under a $1.5 million debt threshold--a recognition of the common use of incorporation even among small family-held farms. Chapter 12 has been an enormous success in the farm community. According to a recent University of Iowa study, 74 percent of family farmers who filed Chapter 12 bankruptcy are still farming, and 61 percent of farmers who went through Chapter 12 believe the law was helpful in getting them back on their feet. Recognizing its effectiveness, my bill proposes that Chapter 12 should be made a permanent part of the bankruptcy code, and equally important, my legislation would extend Chapter 12's protections to family fishermen. In my own state of Maine, fishing is a vital part of our economy and our way of life. The commercial fishing industry is made up of proud and fiercely independent individuals whose goal is simply to preserve their business, family income, and community. My legislation would afford fishermen the same protection of business reorganization as is provided to family farmers. There are many similarities between the family farmer and the family fisherman. Like the family farmer, the fisherman should not only be valued as a businessman, but also for his or her contributions to our way of life and our economy. Like farmers, fishermen face perennial threats from nature and the elements, as well as laws and regulations which unfortunately threaten their existence. Like family farmers, fishermen are not seeking special treatment or a hand-out from the federal government, they seek only the fighting chance to remain afloat so that they can continue in their way of life. Although fishermen do not seek any special treatment from the government, they play a special role in seafaring communities on our coasts, and they deserve protections granted others who face similar, often unavoidable, problems. Fishermen should not be denied the bankruptcy protections accorded to farmers solely because they harvest the sea and not the land. I have proposed not only to make Chapter 12 a permanent part of the bankruptcy code, but also to apply its provisions to the family fisherman. The bill I have proposed mirrors Chapter 12 with very few exceptions. Its protections are restricted to those fishermen with regular income who have total debt less than $1.5 million, the bulk of which, eighty percent, must stem from commercial fishing. Moreover, families must rely on fishing income for these provisions to apply. These same protections and flexibility we grant to farmers should also be granted to the family fisherman. By making this modest but important change to the bankruptcy laws, we will express our respect for the business of fishing, and our shared wish that this unique way of life--that embodies the state of Maine--should continue. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes as if in morning business.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, first, I commend the leadership of my good friend from Georgia in taking the initiative in this area. It is typical of his leadership on so many issues. I am very pleased to join him today on the Senate floor. I rise today as a cosponsor of the Uniformed Services Filing Fairness Act of 1999 introduced by my good friend, Senator Coverdell, and as a supporter of H.R. 1376, which we will vote on shortly. These measures are intended to demonstrate concretely and clearly our support for the men and women serving our country in the region of Yugoslavia by providing them with tax relief on their hazardous duty pay, excise tax exemptions on their long-distance telephone calls, and an extension to allow them to file their tax returns after the April 15 deadline. Today is tax day, a day when millions of Americans rush to their local Post Offices to mail their tax returns. However, today some brave Americans find themselves thousands of miles away from their hometowns engaged in a conflict rather than concerned with a tax filing deadline. Today and every day, our troops put their lives on the line. The sacrifices they make in serving our Nation both here at home and abroad prompt our gratitude. For those forces stationed overseas, the toll is especially great. Our troops now serving in the operations in Kosovo face tremendous burdens in trying to carry out their missions while protecting themselves and their comrades. Our service men and women abroad face the additional hardships and stress of being separated from their loved ones, their families, their homes, and their friends. These troops deserve the opportunity to concentrate on their dangerous mission without having to worry about government paperwork at home. This legislation is an opportunity to demonstrate our support for our troops by our actions, not just with our words. My thoughts and my prayers are with those brave men and women and their families here at home. I urge my colleagues to support this modest but important measure. Again, I commend the Senator from Georgia for his leadership. I yield the floor.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to proceed for up to 15 minutes.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Torricelli and myself, I am pleased to introduce today the Area Code Conservation Act. This legislation is designed to spare American businesses and households the expense and inconvenience of unnecessary changes in their area codes. Mr. President, our current system for allocating numbers to local telephone companies is woefully inefficient. It leads to the exhaustion of an area code long before all the telephone numbers covered by that code are actually in use. My legislation will take steps to stop this wasteful practice and to bring some measure of sanity to our system of allocating telephone numbers. When area codes were first introduced in 1947, 86 area codes covered all of North America. During the three-year period beginning on January 1, 1998, it is estimated that we will add 90 new area codes in the United States alone. In short, Mr. President, in only three years, we will add more codes than were originally required to cover the entire continent. And there does not seem to be an end in sight. To the extent that additional area codes are needed to bring new telecommunications services to existing users or existing services to new users, they are a price we must pay. To the extent they are the result of inefficient practices, however, they are a price we must avoid. Unfortunately, the latter is far too frequently the case, as I shall explain. The problem addressed by my legislation stems from a very simple fact. When a new carrier wishes to provide competitive telephone service in a community, it must obtain at least one central office code. Because it contains its own unique three-digit prefix within an area code, each central office code--and herein lies the crux of the problem--includes 10,000 telephone numbers. Thus, even if a telephone carrier expects to serve only five hundred customers in the community, it will exhaust 10,000 phone numbers in the process. And the ultimate effect of this occurring on a repeated basis is to exhaust all of the numbers in the area code, thereby requiring that a new area code be created. Let me illustrate this further. Let's assume that a town of 12,000 households, each with one telephone line, is served by a single telephone carrier. The carrier will be able to meet the demand with only two central office codes and still have about 8,000 numbers for new customers. Assume further that three new competitors enter the market, which would be a welcome development and one that the 1996 Telecommunications Act was enacted to promote. Since central office codes are not shared by carriers, each new competitor would need its own code consisting of 10,000 telephone numbers. As you can see when you do the math, we would go from exhausting 20,000 numbers to exhausting 50,000 numbers to serve our town of just 12,000 households. My own home state of Maine dramatically reflects the problem inherent in the current system. With a population of about 1.2 million people, we have 5.7 million unused telephone numbers out of the roughly 8 million usable numbers in our area code 207. However, more than 3 million of the unused numbers are within central office codes that have already been assigned, making them unavailable for other carriers. Thus, despite the fact that more than 70% of the telephone numbers in the 207 area code are not in use, Maine has been notified by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator that it will be forced to create a new area code by the Spring of the year 2000. As one Maine commentator noted, even if every moose in Maine had a telephone number, we would still have plenty of numbers left over. Yet, we are told we will soon need another area code, something that probably make as much sense to our moose as to our people. Mr. President, this paradigm of inefficiency in the midst of America's telecommunications revolution might almost be amusing were it not for the fact that it causes real hardships for many small businesses. With its great beauty, the Maine coast relies heavily on tourism for its economic health. We have heard from businesspeople throughout our coastal communities--a gallery owner in Rockport, an innkeeper in Bar Harbor, and a schooner captain in Rockland--who are among those who are rightly concerned about the cost of updating brochures, business cards, and other promotional literature, all of which will be necessitated by having a new area code. And as the innkeeper also told my office, it takes as long as 2 years to revise some guide books, the biggest source of information for many of his guests. Changing the area code could therefore lead to a significant loss of business and unneeded expenses for these small businesses. Along with the economic cost, new area codes create tremendous disruption and confusion for consumers. With geographically split area codes, States, counties, and cities are split apart, creating new territorial boundaries that only serve to divide citizens. With overlay area codes, even more confusion can result. Just imagine having to dial up a different area code in order to order a pizza from a delivery service just down the street. The legislation I am introducing today will resolve these problems and bring common sense to the process of allocating telephone numbers. The Area Code Conservation Act will set a date certain by which the Federal Communications Commission must develop a plan for the efficient allocation of telephone numbers. Consistent with the provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the plan must include measures to ensure that telephone numbers will be portable when customers change carriers and that unassigned numbers in a central office code will not be the exclusive property of a single carrier. The Area Code Conservation Act would also give decision-making authority to the States, where officials know the best policies to promote competition while minimizing costs and confusion to businesses and consumers. Specifically, the Act would authorize State public utility commissions to implement area code conservation measures while the FCC is developing its plan and, I would hope, before a new area code is needlessly forced on the State. These conservation measures could include minimum fill rates for central office codes, mandatory 1,000-block pooling, individual number pooling, and interim unassigned number porting. The legislation would also allow State commissions to require the return of unused or underused central office codes to the numbering administrator. In developing this legislation, I received valuable assistance and technical advice from the Maine Public Utilities Commission. I have every confidence in the ability of the Maine PUC and, indeed, State commissions throughout this country to develop the best policy in this area. The people of Maine welcome technological change and accept that it may come with a price. They are prepared to pay for innovation and progress, but they object--indeed, they should object--when they are asked to pay for inefficiency. When one looks behind its technical subject matter, this bill is about nothing more complicated than stopping a form of government waste. Such waste should not be tolerated by Members of this body, whether they come from States like Maine with a single area code or from States with cities already divided into different area codes. I urge my colleagues to support my efforts to bring an end to this inefficiency and the unnecessary cost and inconvenience it will impose on our citizens, particularly our small businesses.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise on behalf of Senator Gregg and myself to offer a Sense of the Senate Amendment to reaffirm the commitment of the United States government to make good on the promise it made in 1975 to fund special education and to reject the President's efforts to undermine this commitment. When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, the federal government promised states and local school districts that Washington would help them meet the cost of educating students with special needs. The federal government pledged to pay 40 percent of the average cost of providing elementary and secondary education for each student receiving special education. Unfortunately, the federal government has failed to meet this obligation, creating an unfunded mandate that must be borne by every state and community in America. Due to the efforts of Senator Gregg and others, we are making progress. The appropriation for Fiscal Year 1999 contained a 13 percent increase in special education funding. As the Table behind me shows, the Budget Resolution before the Senate increases funding for K-12 education by $27.5 billion more than the President's budget over the next five years. This includes an increase of $2.5 billion dollars for special education over the next five years. We must not retreat from our commitment to fund special education, as the President's budget proposes to do. This Sense of the Senate resolution will make clear that we reject the President's flat funding of special education grants to the states. Instead, it expresses the Senate's intention to fulfill the pledge made years ago. What would this mean for our states and local school districts? Let's take my home State of Maine as an example. In the 1997-1998 school year, the total cost of special education was $189 million dollars. The Individuals with Disabilities Act promised Maine $2,318 per student receiving special education services, but the federal government only sent the states slightly more than $535 per student--which means that Maine received $57 million dollars less than what had been promised. For the current school year, the increased appropriation for special education brings the federal payment to $638 per student but still leaves a shortfall that exceeds $55 million. The President's budget proposal for fiscal year 2000, however, reverses this progress and allows the federal shortfall in Maine alone to grow to almost $59 million. According the U.S. Department of Education, the unmet mandate will reach over $11 billion nationally. We can not continue to shift this burden to our local communities. We must meet the federal commitment to help pay for special education and end this unfunded mandate. I want to quote briefly from a letter I received last week from the Governor of Maine. In the letter, Governor Angus King describes the consequence of this mandate on Maine's communities. The costs of special education (in Maine) . . . continue to grow dramatically, at nearly twice the rate of increase in overall education spending. The federal mandate to provide all children with a free and appropriate education is being met, but the rising costs of special education are borne by local property taxpayers. The fiscal pain of meeting this mandate is dividing our communities around an issue on which we should be united--helping every child meet this or her full potential, without regard to disability. In Maine, meeting this mandate accounts for millions of dollars annually, dollars that otherwise could be used for school construction, teacher salaries, new computers, or any other state effort to improve the performance of our students. We need to increase federal spending on education, but we do not need new federal categorical programs with more federal regulations and dollars wasted on administrative costs. Rather we need to meet our commitment to bear our fair share of special education costs. As Governor King told President Clinton several weeks ago, ``If you want to do something for schools in Maine, then fund special education and we can hire our own teachers and build our own schools.'' This is true for every state. The best thing this Congress can do for education is to move toward fully funding, the federal government's share of special education--not standing in place as the President's budget would have us do. I urge my colleagues to support this commitment to give our states and local communities the financial help they have been promised and so desperately need. Let's finally keep the promise made more than 20 years ago.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr President, I rise to offer a Sense of the Senate amendment to express the commitment of the Senate to expand needs-based Federal student aid programs. I am joined in this effort by Senators Jeffords, Reed, Dodd, Kennedy, and Lieberman. I am pleased by the large increase in funding for education included in the Budget Resolution and thank Senator Domenici and the other members of the Budget Committee for taking a forward-looking stance in favor of our children. I am offering this amendment to help ensure that as these increased funds for education are appropriated--and as the ``hard decisions'' are made about appropriations for specific programs--need-based student financial aid programs are given priority. Although the federal government cannot guarantee that every American will complete a postsecondary education program, we can ensure that every qualified American has an equal opportunity to do so. This is the primary purpose of the student financial aid programs authorized by the Higher Education Act. The evidence is overwhelming that individuals from low-income families pursue higher education at a significantly lower rate than individuals from middle- and upper-income families. This educational gap, which is rooted in economic disparity, threatens to divide our nation into two self-perpetuating classes: an educated class that participates fully in the tremendous economic opportunities that demand a postsecondary education and a class of ``have nots'' lacking the skills and education needed to be successful members of the modern work force. Congress created need-based student financial aid programs to ensure that individuals from low-income families are not denied postsecondary education because they cannot afford it. These are the programs that assist the most disadvantaged Americans. They are the programs that help the students who come from families with no history of pursuing postsecondary education. They are the programs that will close the gap between educational ``haves'' and the ``have nots'' Federal Pell Grants are the cornerstone of our country's need-based financial aid. These grants provide essential financial assistance to almost 4 million students a year. Eighty percent of the dependent students receiving Pell Grants come from families with annual family incomes of less than $30,000. Yet, over the last 20 years, while the cost of postsecondary education has grown at an unprecedented rate, the maximum Pell Grant has declined in constant dollars by 14 percent. This Sense of the Senate amendment states that we should increase the maximum Pell Grant by $400 dollars to $3525. We still will not be back to the 1980 level in terms of purchasing power, but we will be getting closer. This amendment also urges an increase in two other important grant programs. The Federal Supplementary Educational Opportunity Grant and the Leveraged Educational Assistance Program (formerly SSIG) are grant programs managed by schools and states respectively. These programs leverage federal dollars through matching funds from schools and states and provide additional assistance for those students most in need of financial aid. In addition to these important educational grants, my amendment calls for increased funding for two other need-based programs that assist students from low income families: the Federal Work Study Program and the Perkins Loan Program. These are campus-based programs in which the federal contribution is leveraged by matching funds from participating schools. Work Study is a self-help student aid program under which needy students pay some of the cost of their education through jobs that contribute to their education and often involve important community service. The Perkins Loan program allows schools to make low- interest loans to needy students. Both of these programs, along with the Supplementary Educational Opportunity Grants, give financial aid offices flexibility in creating individualized student aid packages that will minimize the student's debt burden upon graduation. Unfortunately, during the last 20 years, funding for the work study program had declined by 25 percent in constant dollars and the capital contribution to Perkins Loans has declined by 78 percent. This Sense of the Senate Amendment expresses our support for these important programs, which aid our neediest students. Providing financial aid is only one aspect of the challenge to equalize education opportunity. Before financial aid can help, a potential student must aspire to higher education. This is one of the goals of the TRIO programs. There is no question that thousands of individuals who would never have considered a college education have been identified by Talent Search and Upward Bound and gone on to college and successful careers. Thousands of other individuals have been assisted while in college by the Academic Support Services Program, while many non-traditional students have entered college because of the Educational Opportunity Centers. Despite this strong record of success, the existing TRIO programs reach only a very small percentage of the individuals who are eligible for their services. The additional funds that this Sense of the Senate Amendments urges will extend the reach of these programs to more disadvantaged youth and adults who could so benefit from the support the TRIO programs provide. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment so that more of our citizens can pursue the American dream of college education.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. I am happy to attempt to produce that information for the Senator from Connecticut. It is a concern of many States that they would receive less money under the President's budget than they would receive if the highway bill were allowed to just work under current law.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to offer a sense-of-the-Senate resolution to give the Senate the opportunity to express its clear commitment to ensuring that Federal gasoline tax revenues in fiscal year 2000 be distributed to the 50 States in accordance with the formula in the 1998 highway bill, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century--or TEA-21 bill, as it is frequently called. Mr. President, let me explain the action that has prompted my amendment and my concern. President Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget contains a proposal which essentially changes the gas tax rules in the middle of the game. The President would distribute approximately $1 billion in higher-than-expected Federal gas tax revenues to a variety of transportation projects, rather than following the formula in the current law. Instead of distributing these extra moneys to the States, as required by the 1998 highway bill, enacted only 9 months ago, the President would divert these funds to other projects. To be precise, section 1105 of last year's highway bill expressly provides that any additional Federal gas tax revenues above the levels envisioned in the act should be distributed to 50 States under the highway bill's formulas. These funds are extremely important to the States. They support a variety of important transportation programs authorized by the TEA-21 bill. It now appears that the Federal Government will receive roughly $1.5 billion in extra Federal gasoline tax revenues next year. The President, however, proposes to take $1 billion of these extra revenues and spend them on a variety of Federal transportation programs, contravening current Federal law. Mr. President, if the full $1.5 billion were allocated to the States under existing law, the State of Maine would receive roughly $7 million in much needed additional highway funds in fiscal year 2000. Under the President's proposal, however, which diverts $1 billion of these gasoline tax funds, the State of Maine would receive only $3.4 million in extra highway funds. This is a reduction of more than 50 percent in the funds that would otherwise be allocated to the State of Maine. In short, if President Clinton's proposal were implemented, the State of Maine would lose approximately $3.6 million in critically needed Federal highway funds next year. The President's plan is unfair to Maine, it is unfair to the other States, and it should not be implemented. It changes course midstream in a way that harms our States' ability to meet their transportation needs. States should be able to rely on the Federal Government to abide by the commitment that it made only last May. Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Budget Committee's report accompanying the budget resolution states as follows: The committee-reported resolution does not assume the President's proposal to change the distribution of additional Highway Trust Fund revenues under TEA-21. My sense-of-the-Senate resolution simply clarifies this language and reiterates the intent behind it. That is, that we should follow the dictates of the 1998 highway bill and allow any and all extra Federal gas tax moneys to go to the States under the terms and the conditions of the highway law. Approving the sense-of-the-Senate resolution would allow the Senate to clearly express its disapproval of the President's plan. We should not change the rules. We should follow the allocation in the highway bill. We should keep the promise that we made just last May. I yield the floor.

Ms. COLLINS. I very much welcome the support of the Senator from Connecticut.

Ms. COLLINS. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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