Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I inquire of the Senator from Nevada, is this the amendment we worked out when we put in a quorum call?

Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. Let me say to the Republican Senators that it is important you begin to tell us what amendments you have. Obviously, we haven't been on this bill very long. For anybody who thinks we are wasting time, when you consider all the time we took off this bill to do other things, we have been on it only a few hours. This is a serious bill with a lot of serious issues. Once again, we are hopeful that Senators will be able to come up with amendments. If in fact we can't complete that list this evening, we will do our best, and we will inform the distinguished chairman of our best efforts. For now, I once again ask if you have amendments, let us know through the Cloakroom. We can start listening. I think we only have a few at this point. We have specifically requested amendments on our side. I do not know about our distinguished friend, the chairman of the subcommittee. Have you begun to accumulate a list? Is it small like our list?

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Domenici pertaining to the introduction of S. 1186 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, both as chairman and now as the ranking member on the Budget Committee, I have been working over the last year with the Western Governors' Association, the Western Regional Council, the Native American Rights Fund, the Western States Water Council, as well as several Indian tribes to correct what I believe to be a flaw in the Budget Enforcement Act as it relates to the Federal funding of Indian land and water settlements. I, along with a group of bipartisan Senators, including the chairman and ranking member of the Indian Affairs Committee are introducing today legislation that will help Congress fulfill its commitment to authorized Indian land and water settlements. In FY 2002, the President's request for Indian land and water settlements funding was $61 million. This represents an increase from fiscal year 2001 of $23 million. The increase is due to the authorization of several large settlements in California, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, and Utah. I am pleased to report that the full request was included in both the Senate and House passed budget resolutions. In turn, the request was fully appropriated in both the House and Senate versions of the fiscal year 2002 Interior appropriations bill. This is a tremendous first step in making sure the Congress fulfills its obligation regarding these settlements. But it is only the first step. In the near future, there are, at least, three additional large settlements likely to come before Congress. The States involved in these settlements are Arizona, Idaho, and Montana. Under current budgetary treatment these settlements will be difficult to fund without taking critical resources from other Bureau of Indian Affairs programs. Currently, once the settlements have been agreed to by the parties involved, the settlements come to Congress for authorization and appropriation. When all appropriations have been distributed the Indians give up any future claims to the land or the water. Appropriations for these settlements are usually spread over 3-10 years depending on the size of the settlement. The payout in one year for an individual settlement does not usually exceed $30 million. I feel, however, that the current budget mechanisms have unfairly treated the handling of Indian land and water settlements in relation to other federally funded Indian programs. The problem with the current status is that, due to the statutory discretionary caps, the perception exists that there is not enough money in BIA's budget to spend on settlements without taking money from other programs in their budget, such as Indian school construction, education, community development. The legislation I am introducing today, the Fiscal Integrity of Indian Settlements Protection Act of 2001, provides for a cap adjustment similar to the one that deals with U.N. arrearages. It would be for authorized Indian land and water settlements and would set a ceiling on what could be spent in one year. Under this proposal, the settlements would still have to be authorized and appropriated, but it would hold the BIA budget harmless for the cost of the settlements. Let me be clear, if these claims are not settled, the US government still can be held liable in court. Claims that go through the court process are authoritatively paid out of the Claims and Judgement Fund. In most cases, negotiated settlements provide more water to the tribes and a less expensive bill to the Federal Government. Frankly, this simple cap adjustment for authorized and appropriated monies for settlements provides a win-win situation for all parties involved. We have made good progress toward funding our Indian responsibilities these past few years. This legislation is a very important step. I, along with Senators Inouye, Campbell, Allard, Baucus, Bingaman, Crapo, Johnson, and Kyl, urge my colleagues to support this bill and future funding of Indian land and water settlements. I ask unanimous consent that a letter from the Ad Hoc Group on Indian Water Rights be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise today and ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce in my home state of New Mexico, as they continue their work to serve the community, with the opening of their Barelas Job Opportunity Center. The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce was founded in May 1975 and is dedicated to improving the quality of life for citizens, by promoting economic and education activities, with an emphasis on small business. In those many years, the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce has helped small business people by providing much needed services and informing them of business opportunities. It also serves as an advocate for issues affecting the small businessperson. Through the Chamber, the entrepreneur also has access to a portal through which they can contribute to the economic and civic development of the community. The Chamber just moved into a new building in an area of Albuquerque that is not affluent or wealthy, but one that is predominately Hispanic, and with history and pride: the South Valley. It is a fitting location for the Chamber, since it has always worked to protect, perpetuate and promote the Hispanic Culture, language and tradition. The Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce will now be able to take their assistance a step further with the opening of their Barelas Job Opportunity Center within their new building. The Opportunity Center, to be dedicated on August 10, 2001, will allow the Chamber to provide even more services individually designed to help members and small businesspersons with their business needs. The Barelas Job Opportunity Center will serve the neighborhood, community, State and Nation for generations to come. I applaud the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce as it opens its new Barelas Job Opportunity Center. The Chamber has made a great impact on our community and with the new Job Opportunity Center, will continue and further its contribution. We wish them much continued success in the future.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, what are you thinking in terms of the bill?

Mr. DOMENICI. I should have mentioned in my remarks, one of the Senators who has helped me in the many months that we engaged in trying to make the Department of Energy more focused with reference to our nuclear weapons problems was the distinguished Senator from Arizona. I thank him for that help. We are not over that hurdle yet. Indeed, General Gordon and that semiautonomous agency have not been totally formulated. They are not grown up yet and are still walking along, maybe comparing it to high school and the eighth grade. They still have to get the diploma. This bill should enhance it or give them some of the tools they claim they need. In the meantime, I thank the Senator for observations and comments regarding a world beyond Kyoto. Clearly, if we do this right, we can have an abundance of energy and there need be no atmospheric pollution; we can do it another way. Clearly, we can get it done. I thank the Senator for his observation.

Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me first acknowledge the wonderful cooperation that exists between the chairman and this Senator as ranking member. I believe under the circumstances and considering the variety of things this subcommittee has to fund, we have done a pretty good job. I couldn't ask for more understanding than I have received from the distinguished Senator, the chairman of this subcommittee. I believe our staff has worked together, and I hope I have been equally considerate and concerned about issues of importance to the good Senator from Nevada. As a result of this effort, we are together in trying to get this bill passed and get it off to conference and getting these issues resolved as soon as possible. Let me say to my good friend, he was talking about a flood that occurred in the State of Nevada in one of those dry rivers where for most of the year no water runs. But then you have a little cloudburst up in the mountains and these dry rivers turn into flooded, huge water resources plowing down the hills right into housing. In our State we call these dry rivers a Spanish name, ``arroyos.'' In my home city of Albuquerque, I was pleased to serve 4 years as the city councilman, sort of chairman of the commission, which made me the closest thing to a mayor as you could have. I remember one Sunday afternoon in the year 1968. I was very young. I had just been on this council as chairman for awhile. It started raining Sunday afternoon. I called up one of my good friends on the city council who knew more about the details of the streets and everything else than anybody in the city. I called him up and said, ``Harry, this rain is coming down in the wrong places; something is going to happen.'' He said, ``Where are you?'' He picked me up and we rode around. Rain kept coming down harder and harder, and these dry rivers started to show a little trickle. Four hours later, we were riding the streets of Albuquerque and big manhole covers over the tunnels that carried water underground to avoid floods were standing or dancing on the water. The water raised those man holes up 4 or 5 feet and stood them up while the place got flooded. We saw more and more of them. I told my friend, ``This is a real problem.'' He said, ``No, things will be all right.'' Finally, 2 hours later, we got a call from the police chief. He said that in one whole piece of our city, maybe as many as 10,000 homes were under water. They had water in the kitchens, close to the tops of the stoves. It was a gigantic flow of water that came down these dry arroyos. I remember coming here with a group of Albuquerqueans. I was city councilman then. We appeared before the Public Works Committee, which had to authorize the project after which it went on to get appropriated. We came up to ask if the Federal Government would expand a program that was about to run out so we could build these rivers so they would be safe. Now if one flies over Albuquerque, as you approach the airport you see two giant cement waterways that are around the edges of the town--huge. They catch the water in these dry rivers up by the mountain and run them down these no longer dry rivers, but they are cement-lined ditches, big ones. Water comes down, and now you can be riding around and your commissioner friend Harry can say, ``It is raining hard, Mr. Chairman,'' and you can say, ``It might hurt something else, but it won't flood anymore.'' That is the kind of thing we pay for in this bill for hundreds of places across America. We hope we get them before they flood, but sometimes we don't. Sometimes we pay for them after they flood. But to make sure we are not building white elephants, we require a very substantial match. The community has to come up with money. That is the way we finally decide it must be important, because they are not just asking us to have a construction project, they are going to pay for part of it. My good friend, the chairman, outlined water issues. Clearly, there is no end to the requests in our country for this. But we have the rule: We don't fund them unless they have been authorized. The committee has to work on them and have hearings. That bothers a lot of our Senators because there is such a backlog of existing authorized programs that we don't catch up very often. We have many billions backlogged that we can't pay for. But we will keep working on it. Overall, the proposed fiscal year 2002 energy and water bill is a very fair and balanced bill that makes important investments in our national security, our energy security, our economic prosperity, and in the health of our environment. This bill is an important step in implementing the President's National Energy Policy. The Senate bill in total provides $25 billion in budget authority and approximately $24.7 billion in outlays. The bill exceeds the President's request by $2.6 billion, and exceeds the House bill by $1.4 billion. Without going into detail about all of the many great things in this bill, I would like to focus my remarks on two broad areas: (1) What this bill does for our energy security, and (2) What this bill does for our national security. For our nation's energy security, this bill represents a major step in fulfilling the President's commitment to a balanced and diversified energy policy--particularly in the area of expanding the supply of clean energy from renewable sources and nuclear power. But before If focus specifically on what this bill does in those two areas, I want to take this opportunity to dispel two persistent myths that have been unfairly associated with the President's National Energy Policy. First, that the policy focuses only on supply and ignores conservation and efficiency. And second, that the policy fails to address the possible threat of global warming. The policy is so clear on the first point that those who argue simply haven't read it. There are more policy recommendations impacting conservation and efficiency than supply. Over $6 billion in proposed tax reductions are targeted at conservation and efficiency. Furthermore, the whole policy is based on substantial gains from improvements in conservation and efficiency. If we maintained the current ratio between energy demand and the gross domestic product (GDP), we would need 77 percent more energy in 2020 than we are producing today--77 percent more. The National Energy Policy recommends conservation and efficiency measures that would reduce the required increase by over half--resulting in us only needing to produce 29 percent more energy by 2020. That is a substantial but necessary commitment to conversation and efficiency. Let me turn to that second myth, that the policy doesn't address the possible threat of global warming. Once again, those who have read the policy shouldn't make that statement. The policy has strong support for clean energy sources. Renewable sources are encouraged in many ways, including tax credits for wind, biomass, solar, and the purchase of clean fuel vehicles. The policy supports a major research program in clean-coal technologies, advocates increased funding for renewable energy R&D and recognizes nuclear energy for its very positive environmental benefits. It is in these last two areas, renewable energy and nuclear energy, that the energy and water bill takes a major step in implementing the President's national energy policy. The renewable energy programs are funded in this bill at $435 million. That's $60 million and 16 percent above the current year level. There's no question that renewable sources can and should play a larger role in our energy supply, and this budget will accelerate progress towards that vision. Within that renewable budget, several programs are slated for major increases. Just to give a few examples: Research on hydrogen-based technologies is up almost 30 percent over last year. That research may lead to decreased use of petroleum products in transportation, certainly a critical goal. Research on high temperature superconductivity is boosted by almost 20 percent. That's a technology that may enable dramatic reduction of losses we now experience in electric transmission lines and motors. Geothermal research is 20 percent above last year and wind systems are up more than 10 percent. Nuclear energy received significant increases as well in this bill. I strongly agree with the President's National Energy Policy in its recommendation supporting the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States. Nuclear plants offer emission-free power sources, help maintain diversity of fuel supply, enhance energy security, meet growing electricity demand, and protect consumers against volatility in the electricity and natural gas markets. This bill pushes nuclear power forward with a number of important initiatives: The bill includes $19 million for university research reactor support--an increase of $7 million over current year--to make sure our country has the educational resources necessary for an economy that continues to rely substantially on nuclear power. The bill includes $9 million--an increase of $4 million over current year--to expand a program to improve the reliability and productivity of our 103 existing nuclear power plants. The bill continues the highly successful Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) at $38 million--$3 million more than current year. The bill provides $14 million--an increase of $7 million--to continue work begun last year on advanced reactor development, including research on generation IV reactors--reactors that will be passively safe, produce less waste, and reduce any proliferation concerns. The bill provides $10 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to prepare to license new nuclear power plants. The bill continues an R&D program we started two years ago on ways to reduce the quantity and toxicity of spent nuclear fuel--called ``transmutation''. This technology, which was recently highlighted in the President's National Energy Policy, will be continued at $70 million in 2002. Let me emphasize that I used the phrase ``spent fuel'' rather than ``waste'' to refer to the materials coming out of our reactors. Right now our national policy calls for disposing of those materials as waste in a future repository. But we need to remember that these materials still contain 95 percent of their initial energy content. I've been concerned for years that it is highly debatable for us to decide that future generations will have no need for this rich energy source. With improved management strategies, possibly involving reprocessing and transmutation, we can recycle that material for possible later use, recover far more of the energy, and dramatically reduce the toxicity and volume of the materials that are finally declared to be waste. As a final thought on energy security, Mr. President, I want to share with my Senate colleagues a vision, which is encompassed in this bill and which I've shared with President Bush. We need to reach beyond the debate over Kyoto with a blueprint that provides the tools to combat global warming. I'm convinced that we can have growth and prosperity in America without global warming. And I'm equally convinced that we can help provide those same benefits for the world. I propose that we provide worldwide leadership to eliminate the threat of global warming by a commitment to prosperity and growth through clean energy. And I further propose that we accomplish this goal through partnerships with our friends and allies, especially those in developing countries. I've specifically urged the President to lead this new initiative, to accelerate our own research and build international partnerships for joint development of all the clean sources of energy--renewables, clean fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and hydrogen-based fuels. Then as we transition to improved technologies in the future, our partner nations will also be building up their energy infrastructure with the latest and cleanest technologies. Last year's energy and water development bill called for improvements in the federal government's role in international development, demonstration, and deployment of advanced clean energy technologies. With this new bill and the President's policy, our nation is developing a suite of energy supplies that will provide us with clean, reliable, economic energy far into the future. But I continue to believe that we should be looking beyond our own borders. I submit that we should be seizing every opportunity to help the developing nations around the world achieve much higher standards of living. They simply can't do that without reliable electricity supplies. Each nation will make their own choices for fuel sources, exploiting their own strengths. We have abundant natural gas--and it will make a huge contribution to a cleaner future for our country. But every nation needs diverse energy supplies, not a singular reliance on one source. Other nations may be well positioned to exploit their solar or wind resources--through this program these nations can make the choices best for their needs. The leadership shown by Senator Byrd on clean coal technologies matches this vision very well. Some other nation's have immense coal resources, through this vision they can benefit by Senator Byrd's efforts to advance clean coal technologies. We can leave the poorest countries to their own resources to develop whatever energy they can, or we can offer substantial help to partner with these nations to help them develop sources that are not only reliable and reasonably priced, but also clean. It's strongly in our self interest to do this. After all, we all share the same air. And in addition, countries with strong economies are our best choice for trading partners Mr. President, let me state again how proud I am to have worked on this bill with Senator Reid. With this bill, we'll be making real progress on the technologies to fuel our, and perhaps the world's economies of the future. For our nation's national security, this bill makes a major investment in solving serious problems in the nuclear weapons complex. With the leadership and resources included in this bill, many of those problems are going to get fixed. The bill includes $6.05 billion for the nuclear weapons (stockpile stewardship) activities of the NNSA, that is $705 million over the President's request, $925 million over the House level, and $1.05 billion over the current year level. I want to again commend Senator Reid, and our full committee chairman, first Senator Stevens and Now Senator Byrd, for recognizing the serious problems in the nuclear weapons complex and providing the resources to fix those problems. This bill makes three major improvements on the President's budget request for nuclear weapons. First, infrastructure. We know from the subcommittee's hearing on infrastructure earlier this year, that our nuclear weapons facilities have degraded to the point that it will take billions of dollars to modernize for the future. The average age of the facilities where we do nuclear weapons work is over 40 years. We will need to spend an additional $300-$500 million a year for the next 17 years over currently planned levels to refurbish the weapons complex to perform its basic mission. These expenditures will be required even if the nuclear stockpile is dramatically smaller. If we do not take action on these infrastructure problems immediately, we will not be able to meet the Department of Defense schedules for refurbishing three main weapons systems representing over 50 percent of our stockpile. We will not have the scientific facilities required to certify weapons. Our technicians and scientists will continue to work in unsafe facilities-increasing health risks and the number of safety related shutdowns. Although the work must begin immediately, the budget request included no funds to begin such an initiative. Therefore, the bill before the Senate includes $300 million to begin a major facilities improvement program in fiscal year 2002 at facilities in South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and California. The second major improvement on the administration's budget request is that the bill provides additional funding to rebuild current weapons. The average age of weapons in the stockpile is now approaching 18 years--most were designed for a life of no more than 20 years. Many weapons components degrade substantially over time and have to be replaced. The Joint Department of Defense/NNSA Nuclear Weapons Council has recognized the fact that most of our weapons will have to be rebuilt, but funds were not requested to do so. Therefore, the bill includes an additional $295 million in fiscal year 2002 to get the NNSA on track to rebuild weapons on the schedule required by the Department of Defense. The third major improvement on the President's request is that this bill fully funds pit production on the required schedule. We must soon have the capability to produce plutonium pits for weapons, a capability we lost when Rocky Flats was closed down in 1989. Plutonium pits are the ``triggers'' for nuclear weapons, that occasionally must be replaced. Today, we are the only nuclear power without the ability to produce them. The budget request puts off indefinitely our ability to deliver a certified pit to the military, but this bill adds $110 million to get the program back on track. Finally, there are a series of programs at NNSA that may be just as important to eliminating or controlling the global nuclear danger-- these programs are to reduce the threat of nuclear weapon proliferation around the world. The administration proposed deep cuts in this area for fiscal year 2002, even though a blue-ribbon review led by Senator Howard Baker and Lloyd Cutler recently concluded . . . The most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or weapon-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists or hostile nation states and used against American troops abroad or citizens at home. The report also concluded that . . . Current nonproliferation programs of the DOE . . . have achieved impressive results thus far, but their limited mandate and funding fall short of what is required to address adequately the threat. I am pleased that this bill adds over $100 million to the important nonproliferation work the NNSA carries out in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. These programs to control the material and expertise necessary to make weapons of mass destruction address problems identified as ``the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today.'' Once again, Senator Reid, I want to commend you for a balanced bill. I do not agree with every aspect of the bill, but I cannot urgue with the fair manner in which you have put it together. I strongly support the bill, and urge all Members of the Senate to do likewise. Let me proceed as quickly as I can to summarize this bill. First, I am very pleased to join with Chairman Reid in considering this fiscal year 2002 Energy and Water bill. I note that in the chair is a new Senator. I would think that he might wonder what in the world is an appropriation bill called Energy and Water. Well, my good friend, the new Senator from New Jersey, will never sit down and rationally decide what is in this bill. What is in it has been decided between the House and Senate as one of the 13 subcommittees of appropriation, and there is no rationale to it. In it we fund water development projects, flood protection projects, the harbors and rivers that need the Federal Government to help. But on the other end, believe it or not, the entire nuclear weapons development, preservation, and research for nuclear weapons is also funded in this bill. It doesn't come under the rubric of energy. Why is it here? It is here because that kind of activity was brought to the Energy Department when the Energy Department was created. This subcommittee pays for that. So, overall, this is a very balanced bill. It covers what I have alluded to. I have great detail with me about what has concerned us and why we have had to fund the part of this that is for nuclear weaponry at a higher level than the President. I am very hopeful that the staff at the White House and the staff at OMB, who have looked at this since putting their budget out, will understand that some of this new money we had to put into the part of this bill that concerns itself with a safe and reliable nuclear stockpile. And remember, Mr. President, every time you say that, you can put a parenthesis in and you can say, without underground testing, because we have voted not to test underground. If you test, it makes it much easier to determine safety, to determine reliability. But we have determined we are not going to do that, and still we are going to spend money and put the finest resources in America to work on the science and physics and computerization part of maintaining this very, very serious and almost unbelievable thing called the American nuclear weapons stockpile. My good friend, Senator Reid, has been a marvelous student of this. We have all had to learn together. I have more of a genuine parochial reason, because two of the three laboratories frequently called the nuclear laboratories--not exactly the right name--are in my State. There is Los Alamos. Everybody knows that is where we did our first nuclear weaponry work--atomic weapon work. It was a mountain, but there is a city there now. In Albuquerque is Sandia Labs, an engineering laboratory, which is part of this. The third one is in the State of California. The three of them do much in addition to the work on nuclear. There are great researchers who are on the cutting edge of much of the science of the future in terms of energy needs and the like. So that is in this bill. And then, obviously, since it is an energy bill, it has an awful lot in it about the energy research and development that is occurring in the Department of Energy. First, let me quickly say that part of this is the implementation of energy policy. While we are still waiting around to debate and pass judgment on whether we are going to have some tax incentives that the President asked for in terms of developing new and different kinds of energy called ``renewables,'' or whether or not we are going to decide to open up more of the public domain to the development of gas and oil; in this bill, we get along with getting some of these things paid for and done, which everybody knows we should be doing. But it is most interesting-- and this is an opportunity to speak for a moment about the President's energy policy in one regard. There is a lot said about: what about conservation, and what about saving our energy? I am reminded that in preparation for this activity, in marking up this bill, I chose to read the President's policy in its entirety. I want to cite one piece, because there is a lot said about there not being enough conservation in this policy, not enough things that push us to conserve and save. Well, I have come to the following conclusion, and if I am wrong, anybody that would like to read the policy and discuss it, I would be glad to do so. As this energy policy tells us what we need in the future, up to the year 2020, it says that we could have to produce 77 percent more to meet our needs over this next 20 years--just for reasonable needs. But would you believe that a huge portion of that possible need is projected to come from conservation and saving energy, such that, of the 77 percent, only 29 percent is from new production? So if you do the arithmetic and subtract them, it is pretty obvious that there is a very large amount that is expected by way of either legislation or conduct in our country to save and conserve energy, along with increasing production of various types of energy. Let me talk about one. I am very pleased that both Senator Reid and I and our staffs worked very hard on what's called renewable energy programs. Because of the Senator's dedication and us working together on this, we are funding the renewable energy programs at $435 million in this bill. That is 16 percent higher than this year. There is no question that renewable resources can and should play a larger role in our energy supply, and we push that or accelerate that in this bill. Within this renewable budget, several programs are slated for major increases, and I am going to tick some of them off. Hydrogen-based technology is up 30 percent over last year. Some people think this whole area of hydrogen-originated energy sources is one of our real solutions to clean and healthy production of energy without having any adverse impact on global warming. The research may lead to a decrease in the use of petroleum products in transportation. We also have superconductivity and geothermal, both have 20-percent increases. All of these can have an incremental positive impact on helping us meet our energy needs without having a major impact on global warming in the future. Incidentally, the President has suggested we should move ahead with nuclear and not abandon it. Nuclear energy has received a significant increase in this bill. I strongly agree with the President's national energy policy and his recommendations supporting the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States. I will state once--and if I have a chance I will do it a number of times--nuclear power in its current form and future generations, new generations, of nuclear powerplants do not contribute to global warming. In other words, the future is protected from the global warming pollution that comes from many of our traditional energy sources so that the evolution, development, and research in the areas of nuclear power can move us ahead in such a way as to provide energy for growth, development, and prosperity for America and for our industrial friends in the world and, yes, indeed, for those countries which do not yet have much of an economic base. We can produce clean energy for the future. With renewables, nuclear, and other forms of energy joining together, we can say to the world: You can grow and prosper. The poor countries will have an equal opportunity to do that, and we will not have to reduce growth, we will not have to put on caps, we will just have to use our ingenuity and science better. There are a number of things we did to let America take a good, solid look at what the next generation of nuclear powerplants or even the next one after that might look like and how it will help. I want to share with my friend, Senator Reid, and those who are paying attention to what we are doing today, a portion of my comments today which I choose to call ``Reaching Beyond Kyoto.'' I, frankly, believe the President of the United States has a rare opportunity to lead the world beyond Kyoto. I say to my fellow Senators, I have talked to the President about this very issue. I have suggested it is a rare opportunity for him to lead the world in reaching beyond Kyoto, and I will talk about that for a minute. This is a vision, and part of it is in this bill because this is what we do in this bill. It says that we need to reach beyond the debate over Kyoto with a blueprint that provides tools to combat global warming. Further, we should ask the world to join as our partners and move ahead, I am convinced we can have growth and prosperity in America without global warming. I am equally convinced we can help provide these same benefits for the world. I propose we provide worldwide leadership to eliminate the threat of global warming by a commitment to prosperity and growth through clean energy, and I further propose we accomplish this goal through partnerships with our friends and allies, especially those in developing countries. I have specifically urged the President to lead this new initiative to accelerate our research and build international partnerships for joint development of all clean sources of energy--renewables, clean fossil fuels which our distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, alludes to frequently as it relates to coal-- nuclear energy, and hydrogen-based fuels. As we transition to improved technologies in the future, our partner nations will also be building up their energy infrastructure with the latest and cleanest technologies. And, yes, there is no question, then, that we can send a message that the poor countries in the world can grow and prosper. As a matter of fact, they, too, can participate in this abundance of growth and prosperity for their people without adversely affecting global warming. Last year's energy and water development bill called for improvements in the Federal Government's role in international development, demonstration, and advanced clean energy technologies. With this new bill which is before the Senate, and the President's policy, our Nation is developing a suite of energy supplies that will provide us with clean, reliable, economic energy for the future. I continue to believe we should be looking beyond our own borders. I submit that we should be seizing every opportunity to help the developing nations around the world achieve much higher standards of living. They simply cannot do that without reliable electrical supplies. I believe we can help them with this global approach of partnerships around the world to develop this technology and produce the next generation of nuclear powerplants. But we should not start on that path unless we set the goals for achievement of what they will look like, what they will do, and what they will not do. It is the same with clean coal technology: Set the goals and then let's achieve them in this world so we can all grow and prosper. We all know we have an abundance of energy supplies in our country. We have natural gas. And it will make a huge contribution for our country. But every nation needs diverse energy supplies, not a singular reliance on a single source. Leadership has been shown by Senator Byrd with clean coal technologies that match this vision very well. Some other nations have immense coal resources. Through this vision, they can benefit by Senator Byrd's efforts to advance clean coal technologies. Through this bill, we can fund renewables and ask our President to join worldwide with efforts to push renewables even more and to greater ends. And it is the same with all of those energies that have no effect, no impact on global warming. I can say, it may very well be, within a very short period of time, a nuclear powerplant will be developed. It will be a small little plant instead of a thousand megawatts. It might be 50 or 100 megawatts. It will be a module. It will be self-contained. It will have no chance of having a meltdown. Just by the physical facts about its evolution and development it cannot, it will not. We might not have to touch it for 25 or 30 years. Those are things we can work on as a criteria for development and growth and then set our great scientists in the private and public sector, with others in the world, to achieve this goal. What a great opportunity in the midst of a world that is frightened about whether we can grow, whether poor people can get rich, where the poor countries have to remain undeveloped because they cannot contribute to global warming. We will say we can all grow and prosper. America hasn't stopped growing and prospering, but we can do it without affecting global warming if we just say let's take a lead, let's do this, let's ask our greatest companies, our best laboratories, our greatest scientists, led by America, let's put some money in each year in a consortium-type arrangement to get this done. If I sound like I am excited about something, obviously for some of you I have not even yet reached anything like an excited pitch, but in any event, I am because I believe it is a rare opportunity to take the genius of science--and I might say, I have a bias and prejudice but I think it will work. I think we have nuclear power for a reason. I don't think we have developed nuclear power to throw it away. I believe we can develop another generation of nuclear power plants that can help this entire world prosper and put global warming behind us. Then we can ask, what is next? What have to be next are growth and opportunities, and not just for us. We say to the world, let's be free. But, we don't want people to think we are for them being free and poor. We are for them being free and affluent, to grow and have what we have. It cannot be done without better sources of clean energy. I believe this bill has things in it which, if put together by the President in a partnership arrangement, I think we could see real daylight and perhaps might be able to set some goals. My last comments will be very brief and have to do with national security. As I said when I started, what a peculiar bill, energy and water. Who would guess that sandwiched between those two words, energy and water, are the U.S. national security interests in nuclear weapons. We have a national policy, voted on this Senate floor on an amendment by the distinguished Senator Hatfield from Oregon. We don't test our nuclear weapons underground nor do we test them at all. We don't do that anymore. That used to be the easy way. I say that because today it looks easy. That is the way we used to determine reliability and safety. We don't do that anymore. We don't test underground. We have something to take its place. We have a whole body of science and computerization that we put together. It is now in the Department of Energy, and it has reached major nuclear laboratories. We fund a program called science-based stockpile stewardship. Stockpile is the nuclear weapons stockpile. We fund a part of the Department of Energy that is called the NNSA. My good friend, Senator Reid, alluded to it when he spoke of creating this new institution within the Department. The current leader is four-star General Gordon. He's doing a great job of pulling together and making sure there is one spokesman worried about the nuclear weapons aspects of the Department of Energy, reporting only to the Secretary. In a very real way he's making sure we do a better job with what we spend on this stockpile. Nonetheless, we have to spend money on it. The biggest difference between our budget and the President's budget is what to do with replenishing some of the physical facilities that are now old and broken down that are part of this NNSA. This bill says, let's get started in multiyear repair and replenishing of some of the facilities that are nearly 50 years old in which we ask the world's greatest scientists to work to help keep this program and do this very difficult job. It will take many years to replenish these physical facilities, these laboratories. In addition, there are specific items such as major improvements in the funding of pit production. You simply must soon have the capability to produce plutonium pits for weapons, a capability we lost when Rocky Flats was closed in 1989. We had to put extra money in this bill, in order to keep that program on the calendar on which it is expected to be. We have put these funds in because we know they are needed. Add it all up and we have a very well rounded bill covering mundane things as well as the complex and difficult. In closing, let me say, that as part of this Department of Energy, we have developed some great research laboratories and not just those created and involved in nuclear work. There are many others that work on various aspects of research in America, most in the fields of energy, but not all, where some of the very best scientists in the world and some of the very best basic science research activities take place. In summary, we think we have a bill that takes care of, as well as possible, water resource needs of our country. It takes care of the basic energy needs we can promote through the Energy Department in moving ahead with another generation of nuclear reactors. And it encourages more progress on renewables. Through this bill and another dealing with cleaning up our coal so we can use it cleanly, we can have a prosperous future without having a negative impact on global warming and the future of our country and the world's people. We think we have done that fairly well. We have spent more than the President asked. We hope we will be able to explain to the White House and OMB why and how that was done. We will have time after the bill is debated to do that. In the meantime, as the amendments come forward, perhaps the White House will have some suggestions. I hope they don't ask us to change our vision. I think the vision in this bill is to move ahead with new sources of energy beyond Kyoto so we can say we are going to do it in a way that everyone will grow and prosper, so the poor can get rich in the world. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Yes, sir.

Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DOMENICI. I was present indeed at your invitation for that wonderful event. The reason I rise is to express to you what a great institution the Senate is, but the reason I say it to you is that over time you have, more than anyone else here, continually reminded people such as me what a great institution the Senate is. And you know, if you are not steeped in history, like I wasn't, or if you really didn't spend a lot of time other than in normal schooling on the constitutional framework, then you don't know about the heroes of the Senate. You may only know that the Senate is over there in Washington. But, essentially, when the Senator from West Virginia and the Senator from New Mexico, about 6 or 7 weeks ago got up on the floor and debated--I think the Senator from West Virginia wanted 3 hours and got 3 hours--on the issue of whether the Budget Act of the United States, a statute, in this instance, changed the basic Jeffersonian rules of the Senate or not, which the Senate voted with this Senator saying it did-- 50-49 is my recollection--I recall how passionate you were about reminding everyone what the rules of the Senate meant to the rights of the American people, to have their issues debated as long as the Senator, under the rules, could get them debated. Who would have thought that was an important thing, until you figure out what they really had in mind for the Senate. We are a very different institution than the House. Sometimes we get into arguments and deride each other--the House does this, the Senate does that, the upper and the lower, whatever the people say. But the truth is we are tied inextricably to the notion of there being sovereign States that make up America. As a Senator, you find a way to tie that into the Senate and what we do; to the fact that the States have a tremendous amount of authority and autonomy in the United States. That is the way it is and should be. You represent your State and I represent mine. In a very real sense, we are permitted to do that because of what our Founding Fathers sacrificed to put the Senate into this basic governance approach. Remind us, once again, of our origins and how important the Senate is, how much it was debated, of the great concern there was, and then to bring it current, as you do frequently, reminding us of what we are and who we are. I think it requires that somebody from way off in New Mexico congratulate you for how you do that. What you had to say about the Senate, not just today but over these years, will be for however long we exist and clearly will never be forgotten as part of our fabric. I am very pleased to be here as that fabric is woven by the distinguished Senator from West Virginia.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise today to announce my cosponsorship of S. 570, the Violence Against Women Office Act introduced by my colleague Senator Biden. This bill will further our efforts in combating the problem of domestic violence. Domestic violence is not simply a localized, private issue, the ripple effect-- socially and economically--from this problem makes it a concern for all Americans. The statistics make my case. The crime of battering occurs every 15 seconds in this country. Over 50 percent of women will experience physical violence in an intimate relationship during their lifetime. Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend per year to three million women annually who are physically abused by their husband or boyfriend. The Violence Against Women Act is a strong indication of our commitment to address this problem. Any possible action we can take to enhance the effectiveness of our government's efforts in this arena must be taken. This bill is one such action. Establishment of the Violence Against Women Office, (VAWO) by statute will provide permanency in our federal efforts to combat domestic violence. This bill will institutionalize the office and will help to fulfill the federal government's responsibility to meet the goals embodied in the Violence Against Women Act, (VAWA). This office will be located within the U.S. Department of Justice, placed within the Associate Attorney General's Office, and will be led by a director appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. In addition to running the VAWO, the Director will serve as Special Counsel to the Attorney General on all issues related to violence against women. The office is responsible for the development of policy, programs, public education initiatives, and management of all grant programs funded under the VAWA. I would underscore that this legislation does not contemplate increased staff or require any expenditure of funds beyond that currently appropriated. In the past, the VAWO director has brought visibility and credibility to the matter of violence against women, making it an issue of national concern and earning the respect of police, prosecutors, and victim service providers. This precedence should be furthered by establishing an office to address violence against women by statute. The Office and its Director will reflect the importance that Congress and the Administration place on making this issue a priority for the federal government and the country. In addition, this step will insure that succeeding Administrations will continue to fully implement the provisions of the VAWA. An office placed under the direct supervision of the Associate Attorney General will reflect the Justice Department's understanding that non-criminal justice system services should be offered as part of a community coordinated response. By employing a specialized knowledge of the best practices in the field, a statutory mandate will guarantee that grant funds are well utilized. A strong and visible office is necessary to implement the recommendations embodied in the National Agenda and Call to Action on Violence Against Women. I am proud that New Mexico has many dedicated individuals offering services to battered women in our state. The Violence Against Women Act has bolstered their means to provide shelters for women in crisis, get access to legal assistance, and transition out of abusive situations. Further, VAWA funding is provided for educational outreach to medical providers and local law enforcement to increase their abilities to identify and respond in domestic violence cases. Just last year, New Mexico entities received numerous grants as a result of the Violence Against Women Office. These grants included: El Refugio, Inc. of Silver City received $304,931 from the Civil Legal Assistance Grant Program, an increase from their 1998 grant of $295,596. With these monies, they will be able to continue existing project activities in their legal assistance program from low income and indigent battered women. Likewise, The Eight Northern Indian Pueblos, Inc., the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, the Pueblo of Laguna, and the Santa Ana Pueblo have collectively received $331,593 from the STOP Violence Against Indian Women Discretionary Grant Program. This allocation will be used to enhance and maintain current programs aimed at decreasing violence against women. Since enactment of VAWA, other grants totaling over $1.5 million have been provided to the City of Albuquerque in support of the Albuquerque Police's Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART), to Santa Fe County for implementation of a judicial oversight program to enhance offender accountability, and to Dona Ana County's efforts to expand prosecutorial services for victims, DART and La Casa Inc., the local battered women's shelter. This nation-wide problem demands a local response. Federal funding is being effectively used to leverage existing community-based organizations and local law enforcement officials to help prevent and persecute domestic violence. Last year I cosponsored the Violence Against Women Act. This year I am supporting full funding of VAWA programs for the Justice Department programs and in the Health and Human Services budget, despite the tight fiscal constraints and competing priorities for those agencies. Domestic violence is a scourge. We must commit to addressing it. This legislation is one concrete step in the right direction.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, OCS Lease Sale 181 is an essential element of a national energy policy that will provide affordable and secure supply of energy. Sale 181, the most promising domestic opportunity for newly-available leases in many years is a resource rich area for new supplies of natural gas and oil. It will play an important role in meeting the Nation's energy needs. Sale 181 is the work-product of more than five years of planning and preparation by the Federal Government, affected States, and industry, and should proceed as scheduled in December 2001. The Nation's demand for natural gas is expected to grow significantly. According to a 1999 National Petroleum Council study, the nation's demand for natural gas is expected to increase by 32 percent to 29 trillion cubic feet by 2010 and by 41 percent to 31 trillion cubic feet by 2015. Current demand is 22 trillion cubic feet. Natural gas is essentially a North American commodity. If the Nation is to meet its growing natural gas demand, access to gas resource rich areas like the Sale 181 area is an indispensable element of the energy policy agenda. Major reserves of oil and natural gas are believed to exist in the eastern gulf. According to a study conducted in conjunction with the 1999 National Petroleum Council study, the Sale 181 area may hold 7.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 1.9 billion barrels of oil. This is enough natural gas to supply 4.6 million households for 20 years and enough oil to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for three and one-half years or make enough gasoline to fuel 3.1 million cars for 20 years. This is also three and one-half times the amount of oil currently in the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. Sale 181 was recently modified to ensure a balance between state and federal interests. Key affected constituencies including Alabama, Florida, and the Department of Defense were consulted during development of the current five-year plan to ensure that all concerns were addressed. For example, the sale area was drawn to insure it was consistent with the State of Florida's request for no oil and gas activities within 100 miles of its coast, including limiting the number of tracts offered for lease. In 1996, Florida Governor Lawton Chiles expressed appreciation to MMS for developing a program that recognized the need to exclude any tracts within 100 miles of Florida's coasts. The sale area, with full recognition by Florida, including Florida congressional delegation, was specifically excluded from current leasing moratoria language under both Congressional action and President Clinton's 1998 Executive order. Other tracts are expected to be deferred to assure smooth operations when the military and industry operate in the same area. Sale 181 is a regional opportunity that impacts 5 Gulf States; all 5 Gulf States were consulted. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas support Sale 181. These States will enjoy significant economic benefits as a result of exploration and production activities in the area. In addition, the coastal area of Louisiana will be the most heavily impacted of the five States. The impact on Florida will be minimal. Many tracts in the sale area are closer to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama than to Florida. In fact, Cuba is closer to Florida shore than is this lease. Parts of the sale area come within about 40 miles of Mississippi, 64 miles of Louisiana, and about 18 miles of Alabama. Florida could benefit significantly from Sale 181. Florida's population is expected to grow by 29 percent between now and 2020. Florida's total demand for natural gas is expected to grow by 142 percent during the same period. About two-thirds of this growth in demand is for natural gas to generate electricity. Some of the potential 7.8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that could be produced from Sale 181 could help meet the State's significant demand for natural gas during this time. Making more natural gas available to Florida utilities for electricity generation should lead to better air quality in the state.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the American people should understand that if this amendment is adopted, it will stop the rebate checks in their tracks. It is almost as if we want to take the money back from the people before we ever give it to them. They are saying: Congress did something right. And those who look at the American economy say: Hey, they did something right. It is about the right time to have a big tax cut. I do not believe you will find one economist of renown and repute in the United States who will say in the middle of this downturn we should increase taxes. Ask somebody. I asked a bunch of them. They said this might not be the greatest tax plan, but cut the taxes and leave it alone. I say to my friend, Senator Hollings, he did a good thing when we had the budget resolution before us. He was ahead of us. He said put more of it in the early years. We went off to conference and followed his admonition. Now he thinks that is too much. The checks that are in the mail, if they could get at them, knowing the post office, could even be stopped in a week if we adopted this amendment. It is the wrong thing to do to the people; it is the wrong thing to do for the American economy, and certainly for the Congress it is absolutely the epitome of moving in the wrong direction when the country has problems. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have 2 minutes. I yield 1 minute to Senator Baucus.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am not here in the Chamber to discuss the economics of the next 4, 5, 6, 10 years, nor am I here to conduct an argument with the Budget chairman with reference to the status of the economy, what we are getting versus what we projected. In due course, we will get some projections that are authentic and we will be down here to talk about the shortfall, which perhaps is a shortfall in revenue, but we have nothing official. We have a statement out of the White House. There is a formula that could be applied if the economy comes down by x amount or the tax take could be reduced by a certain amount. My good friend Senator Conrad is building a proposed set of hearings around that. I look forward to them. For now, let me say the biggest thing that has happened with reference to the surplus is, No. 1, the Congress, led by the Senate, decided to increase the stimulus this year in this remaining part of the budget cycle. We decided in conference and then voted, with very large votes, that $72 billion would be given back to the American people during the remainder of this year. That is a very large sum. It is the most prudent thing we could have done. Looking back, I am very glad we did it. The only thing we have going governmentally that might help this economy is to get some of these tax dollars back into the hands of taxpayers to see if it will build on their confidence as consumers or if they will use it to purchase items that are currently under the rubric of heavy inventories that are driving the economy down. No. 1, the only big thing we have done is put in place a tax cut of around $72 billion in the first year, this year, and about $30 billion plus next year. To the extent that that reduced the surplus, I guess one would have to ask: Should we now undo that tax measure? I understand somebody is going to propose as an amendment that we reduce the tax cuts. I don't know if it is in the first year or what, but the Senate followed our good friend, Senator Hollings, here in the Chamber while we were doing the budget resolution and said we should do more in the first and second years, and essentially the conference on the tax bill gave in to the proposals coming forth from this body. The second thing that has happened is even though the Congressional Budget Office had dramatically reduced the expectation of growth, they went from about a 5.1 growth to an estimate for the relevant year of 2.5 percent, so we were operating on a rather conservative set of economics, but what has happened is a shortfall in the American economy, or the downturn, which has gone on pretty long--much longer than many expected--is apparently going to cause some diminution, some lessening of the taxes coming into the coffers than was expected. We don't have the exact information from how or from whence. So we have a tax cut that is our best hope of bringing this economy back and causing this downturn to be minimum, at its minimal duration, and to start back up as early as possible. I did not promote that tax package with enough enthusiasm about it being needed for the economy because I didn't believe we had the shortfall coming and it would last this long. I spoke of that tax cut to make Government smaller and leave money in the hands of the people. Other people thought it was an antirecessionary measure, and I am grateful they did it because it turns out to be right. The $70 billion this year and the $30 billion-plus next year are probably as close to what the economic doctor would have prescribed to us if he were looking at the veins of our economy and saying we better make some of them a little more robust. So that happened. The economic estimate went from 5.5 plus to 2.5 by the CBO. Apparently, it is coming down beyond that, but for how long and how much, I don't know. We will be getting our numbers together and we can have a very interesting debate. What do we do if, in fact, this recession, this downward trend, lasts a little longer than expected? What do we do with reference to the shortfall in revenues? Do we increase taxes? Of course not. Do we just cut everything in the Federal programs 10 percent or 8 percent? Of course not. We won't do that. Today, we have an amendment by the new chairman of the Budget Committee that, I regret to say, I cannot support. I don't think it is the right thing to do. First of all, this amendment is the same amendment that was offered in the Senate and defeated by the Senate on the Bankruptcy Act. The amendment the distinguished chairman is offering now, he offered then. Approval of it was denied by the Senate. The second thing is, if we look at the entire Medicare Program instead of just Part A, we will see that Medicare is already running a deficit of $58 billion in 2002 and nearly a trillion dollars over 10. For what does that cry out? It cries out for reform of the Medicare system, and it cries out loudly for a different delivery system and prescription drugs. Incidentally, there is $300 billion sitting in this budget to be used for prescription drugs if and when we get a bill. But we have said all of the moneys that are part of Medicare should be used to reform this, and certainly Medicare money should be used as part of a reform measure, including prescription drugs. The second point is that it was voted down in the Senate on a point of order. This splits Medicare in half. For the first time, we had half of Medicare off budget, half of Medicare on budget. That doesn't mean anything to anyone out there. But it is just totally the wrong way to help solve the long-term problem in Medicare. Doesn't everyone in this Chamber hope that as part of prescription drugs we actually reform Medicare so that it can deliver more for less? It is a 25- or 30-year-old regime, in terms of what is paid for and deducted and all of those things. Those should be made modern in the reform package. This amendment won't permit that because it says the portion of the trust fund that is for Medicare Part A is totally off budget, but Part B is on budget. From my standpoint, we are going to just encourage more gimmicks when we do this kind of thing. We are all aware that the surpluses were generated because we shifted home health services from Part A to Part B in 1997--a charade of sorts because that was a way of saying Medicare looks better--but at the same time we took one of the biggest components of their responsibility away from them. Anybody can do better on money if they have five mortgages and somebody says: Well, don't count three of them; we will put them somewhere else and you can run around and say all you owe are two mortgages and the other three are sitting over there somewhere and you are not going to do anything about them. I believe the most important thing we can do--and everybody has priorities--the most important thing we can do this year--and I think the President is taking the first step tomorrow--is to get started on Medicare reform. My concept would be that the money in Medicare, Part A and Part B--and the $300 billion in this budget for additional prescription drugs--we package all that and pass a Medicare bill this year. I think that is the right thing to do. I could talk a lot longer about trust funds and how they relate to the budget of the United States. But, for today, I believe the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, or the ranking member, whose bill is on the floor, will make a point of order. The distinguished majority whip has said a point of order will be made. I think it will be made in each case by a different Senator, one from each side of the aisle. This violates the Budget Act and therefore a point of order lies against it. I don't think anybody who votes for that is going to make it stick that they are against Medicare. As a matter of fact, one might make the argument that if the Conrad amendment is adopted and made law, which is a long way from now, you might make it harder to get reform in prescription drugs because you will be working off some arbitrary lines that took part of it off budget and left part on budget. So we need reform, not just shuffling money around. I look forward to many days of discussions with my friend, the new chairman. I look forward with enthusiasm to discussing what is happening to the American economy. What should we do since the lull is a little longer? I think we ought to start talking about that. I yield the floor and thank the Senator from Ohio for yielding time to me.

Mr. DOMENICI. I will not use over 10 minutes, I say to the Senator. It would be 7 to 10 minutes. Mr. Voinovich. Fine.

Mr. DOMENICI. You said you would? Mr. Voinovich. Yes. Absolutely.

Mr. DOMENICI. Reserving the right to object, and I will not object-- maybe I didn't hear it--did you reserve some time for the Senator from New Mexico to speak?

Mr. DOMENICI. I am reserving the right to object.

Mr. DOMENICI. Reserving the right to object.