Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, if I knew when I asked the Senator from Pennsylvania if he could be finished in 20 minutes that he was going to be delivering such an important speech, I might have been reluctant to ask him. I do commend him on that speech--not the brevity and coming in on time, but the substance is very important.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, if I knew when I asked the Senator from Pennsylvania if he could be finished in 20 minutes that he was going to be delivering such an important speech, I might have been reluctant to ask him. I do commend him on that speech--not the brevity and coming in on time, but the substance is very important.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I note the presence of the distinguished Senator from the State of Missouri, Mr. Bond. I say to the Senate, since the amendment that we are now going to take up for up to 3 hours this evening has to do with the upper and lower Missouri River debate, I am not going to manage any of that. I am going to let the management be in the hands of Senator Kit Bond, if he does not mind, in my stead. I join him in his effort. He knows that. But nonetheless, it is his issue. I prefer to have him managing it.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect to the energy and water appropriations bill, all first-degree amendments must be filed at the desk by 6:30 p.m. this evening, with the exception of up to five amendments each to be filed by Senator Domenici of New Mexico and Senator Reid of Nevada, and those be filed no later than 7:30 p.m. tonight, and that all first-degree amendments be subject to relevant second-degree amendments.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have a request that the leader asked me to make that has been cleared on both sides. I ask unanimous consent that immediately following the Thursday morning vote relative to the Missouri River provision in the energy and water appropriations bill, the Senate then proceed to a vote on the adoption of the motion to proceed on H.R. 4444, notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, the Committee on Appropriations favorably reported H.R. 4733 by a vote of 28 to 0 on Tuesday, July 18. Senator Reid and I have worked very hard this year to put together a fair bill under extremely difficult circumstances. As reported by the committee, the recommendation would provide $22.470 billion in new budget authority for fiscal year 2001. That total is broken out between a defense allocation that is pretty good, and a non-defense allocation that is extremely limited. The Defense BA allocation is $13.484 billion. That is $400 million over the President's request and $1.384 billion over last year. The committee requested the additional money to address some very serious needs in the nuclear weapons complex, defense environmental clean-up, and in ongoing international nonproliferation programs. However, the BA allocation on the non-defense side of the bill is much more difficult--it provides $8.986 billion, which is $603 million below the President's request and $73 million below the current year level. In order to accommodate some serious shortfalls in the President's request, and some very legitimate requests from Members, we have had to cut a significant amount more than the $603 million we are short from the request. The allocation has also forced the committee to make very difficult choices, and we have tried to do that on as fair a basis as possible. We have followed certain criteria. In the water accounts for example: No. 1, we have tried to focus available funding, to the greatest extent possible, to ongoing studies and construction projects. No. 2, we have included no new construction starts or new initiatives in fiscal year 2001, and only a very limited number of new studies or planning projects. No. 3, we have not included unauthorized projects or water and sewer infrastructure projects contained in the Water Resources Development Act of 1999. No. 4, numerous projects budgeted at or near the Corps' capability have been reduced in order to pick-up funds for congressional priorities and to restore funding not requested by the administration for flood control and inland navigation projects. No. 5, given these constraints, we have been limited to accommodating only the highest priority requests of Members where possible. Having said that, the recommendation for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers totals $4.104 billion. This is $41 million above the budget request and $22 million below the FY 2000 enacted level. The following is a highlight of the recommendation of the Corps Budget for FY 2000: General Investigations totals $139 million, down $23 million below the current year. Construction General totals $1.361 billion, down $24 million below the current year. Operation and Maintenance totals $1.862 billion which is $8 million over the current year. Moving on to the Bureau of Reclamation, the recommendation before the committee totals $753 million. This is $48 million below the budget request and $13 million below the current year level. The recommendation includes: Six hundred and fifty-five million dollars for Water and Related Resources which includes both construction and operation and maintenance of Bureau projects. This is $50 million over the current year level. None of the $60 million requested for the California Bay-Delta Restoration program is provided in the bill, as the authorization for this program expires in fiscal year 2000. Thirty-eight million dollars for the Central Valley Project Restoration Fund a reduction of $4 million from the current year. For the Department of Energy's non-defense accounts, we have proposed some substantial reductions from the President's request. However, in many cases, those reductions appear large only because the President proposed large increases we will not be able to accommodate, given our non-defense allocation. In other accounts such as Nuclear Energy R&D, the administration request was 4 percent below current year. Therefore, the committee has tried to balance the Department's research efforts by providing reasonable increases to these important research efforts. For the Science programs at the Department of Energy, the committee recommends $2.870 billion, an increase of $82 million over last year, but still $292 million below the request. Over half of the total proposed increase to Science was in one construction project, the Spallation Neutron Source in Tennessee. The committee strongly supports this project and has provided $240 million, an increase of $140 million over current year. The allocation forced the committee into some very difficult decisions regarding many otherwise outstanding programs and initiatives under the Office of Science. For example, although the committee has traditionally provided strong support to High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Fusion Energy, all are funded at below last year's level. Within the defense allocation, we have been able to add significant funds to some very pressing problems. Within Weapons Activities, the committee has provided $4.883 billion, an increase of $244 million over the budget request. The committee is very concerned about the state of the science based Stockpile Stewardship Program. As it is now, the program is not on schedule, given the current budget, to develop the tools, technologies and skill- base to refurbish our weapons and certify them for the stockpile. For example, we are behind schedule and over cost on the production of both pits and secondaries for our nuclear weapons. The committee has provided significant increases to these areas. Furthermore, DOE has failed to keep good modern facilities and our production complex is in a terrible state of disrepair. To address these problems, the mark provides an increase of over $100 million for the production plants in Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, and South Carolina. But it is not just the physical infrastructure that is deteriorating within the weapons complex, morale among the scientists at the three weapons laboratories is at an all-time low. For example, the last two years at Los Alamos have witnessed security problems that greatly damaged the trust relationship between the government and its scientists. Additionally, research funds have been cut and punitive restrictions on travel imposed. As a result, the labs are having great difficulty recruiting and retaining America's greatest scientists. To help address this problem, the bill has increased the travel cap from $150 million to $200 million, and increased Laboratory Directed Research and Development. And I intend to offer additional amendments to increase LDRD and travel. For security, the committee recommends $336 million for the Department's security office, an increase of $213 million over last year. This is in addition to the $45 million for increased Cyber Security that was just enacted as part of the fiscal year 2000 Supplemental. In addition, the committee has made sure General Gordon, as the new head of the NNSA, will have the resources and the authority to take care of security throughout the weapons complex. The Department has experienced tremendous difficulty in constructing its special experimental and computational facilities within budget and within schedule. The National Ignition Facility is only the most recent example, and on that issue, Senator Reid and I have agreed to recommend at this time only the $74 million requested by the administration, recognizing that much more money will be required this year if this project is to continue. Regarding accelerator production of tritium, the committee has combined that with other programs to begin an exciting new program called Advanced Accelerator Applications. The committee recommendation includes $60 million to continue the important work on a back-up tritium source for defense purposes, but will also fund important work on accelerator transumutation of waste and other accelerator applications. The committee continues its strong tradition of support for nuclear nonproliferation issues. We recommend $909 million, an increase of $43 million over the request, and $180 million more than last year. For Defense Environmental Management, the committee recommends $6.042 billion, a $326 million increase over last year. To the extent possible, we have tried to address the needs of Members with environmental management sites. We have provided increases at Savannah River and the Hanford site, and provided additional funds for environmental science and technology research at Idaho and other labs. In summary, the recommendation before you is for $22.47 billion, a reduction of $225 million from the request. Within that amount, non- defense programs are reduced $603 million while defense accounts increase $400 million. This is going to be a difficult year, but I look forward to consideration by the full Senate. It is our intention to work hard over the next few evenings to complete work on the bill. It is my intention to seek a unanimous consent that all amendments be filed by noon on Wednesday. We will be here all evening, and I urge my colleagues to bring any amendments they may have to the floor so we can consider them. It is my intention, shortly after all amendments have been filed, to act on a package of managers amendments. Before I yield back, I would like to thank Chairman Stevens for the strong support he has given to the energy and water bill, particularly on the defense funding side. I would also like to thank my ranking member, senator Reid, for all the effort he has put forth in working together on this bill.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent--and this has been approved by the other side--that the committee amendment to H.R. 4733 be adopted and that the bill as amended be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendments, provided that no points of order are waived by this request.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, while Senators are going to talk about projects, programs, activities, and amendments to add $5 million here or $7 million there, I want to break this appropriations bill into two parts--I wish I had it on a chart, and maybe I will have it the next time we are on this bill--so that when anybody offers an amendment that costs money, if it is in the nondefense part, whatever it is for, maybe some science research, maybe a water project that we did not fund, maybe operation and maintenance for some part of the Mississippi, a levy system, we are going to try to show you where we are really hurting for money is the nondefense part of this budget, the water projects and the nondefense science. As a matter of fact, the allocation is about $604 million below the President's request in the nondefense part of this appropriations bill. That is $73 million less than last year's appropriations. It is not a question only of not being able to meet the President's request. We are, in essence, below last year's appropriated number, which many people say isn't realistic unless you are prepared to take some programs out of the Department--and we can hardly do that. That is a negative $73 million. Fortunately, on the defense side, we have talked our way through all these different hurdles of how much defense money is available, and I am very appreciative of the fact that through the efforts of our chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the appropriators who spend defense money--that is the big defense bill, the smaller bill on military construction and a very small bill on Commerce that spends some money on defense--they have left, as part of the increase, sufficient money to cover the defense in this bill, which is $13.5 billion. I regret to say the problem we have is when we go to the House, we have to raise the House's number because they are about $600 million below us on the defense side of their bill. It is a difficult problem. I do believe the allocation that both chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are going to ultimately come up with will make us whole at the Senate level on defense. I just explained why. The money is there, and I hope before this is over, we will convince everyone we are in an area where we have to be very concerned how much money we are spending on the defense side because the morale and capability of our National Laboratories to maintain our nuclear weapons activities is getting very close as to whether it can continue in a manner we have expected over the years. When somebody says it is only $7 million and I need it for a levy and I need to start a program even though we said no new starts, I want to keep in front of everybody that we are $604 million below the President on nondefense, and the House is $600 million below ours on defense, and we are $500 million higher than the President's on defense. Those will be put up here for everybody to see. If anybody wants an interpretation of what is in this bill, I tried very hard in a nonpartisan way to explain it in my earlier statement. I have given full credit to the magic of bipartisanship when it comes to writing a bill like this. We have to try to work together. Maintaining our nuclear capacity through science and research and nonproliferation should not be a partisan issue. Thanks to Senator Reid, it is not. There are a few disagreements he and I have. We will iron them out on the floor. I want to make sure everybody understands that right now, this day, 5 weeks before the new fiscal year, the nuclear defense laboratories, which essentially are made up of a piece of the National Laboratory in Tennessee called Oak Ridge, called Y-12, plus Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and Livermore, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, are the laboratories that maintain our nuclear weapons activities that measure the performance and ability of our nuclear weapons, and their safety and reliability. Right now, they are fragile because the morale is low. Throughout this short debate, I will keep mentioning to Senators that we better be careful with reference to the scientists who have done the big defense work who we must retain at these laboratories to perfect our Stockpile Stewardship Program, which allows no weapons testing while we are still going to protect the reliability of our weapons. We need to retain the old heads who have done this work for so long. At Los Alamos there are about 40 of them who are in the X division, including NEST or the Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Their morale is very low because, my colleagues will recall, that is the area where that hard drive was found behind a machine, and they did not know how it got there. They have now been under investigation for 14 weeks. Fourteen weeks is a long time to have the very best scientists in the world who have maintained our nuclear capacity, some of them for 30 years, some for 25, some more 40, under investigation. We do not want them to leave the laboratories, and we want to attract the best new scientists to follow in their footsteps and have them educated by the other scientists. We are not succeeding at either. The new recruits of the very best scientists are at an all-time low, and that is measurable. In other words, we know how many scientists we invited to work and how many accepted. I will put that in the Record. It is very low compared to 5 years ago. We also know how many are planning to leave, and it is very high compared to other years. Everybody knows I have a parochial interest. At least they would assume that. If one of my colleagues had a laboratory like Los Alamos in his or her State, I say to any Senator, I assume they would be concerned about it. If they had a Sandia National Laboratory, which is the engineering laboratory for nuclear weapons, I assume they would be concerned. I am concerned, and I have to try to convince the Senate that we have to put back some money in terms of morale builders, and we have to start telling those great scientists that they have done a wonderful job for America. So something got messed up. If you can't prove there is spying or espionage, pretty soon you ought to get off their backs and you ought to say to them: We are going to fix this administratively. I could go on tonight and tell you how we are going to do that because we have a new administrative approach to running the nuclear weapons activities of America. We have a great man, General Gordon, heading it. Give him a chance. Give him a chance to restructure. At the same time, let somebody who knows their problems lead this effort. He is about as knowledgeable as anyone we could get to head the NNSA, the National Nuclear Security Administration. It is hard to remember that name, but it will not be hard in a couple years because this general is going to make sure we know about it. He is already showing some real leadership in terms of our understanding what NNSA is. It is the entire package of activities for our nuclear safety as far as our weapons and nonproliferation. We know he is going to fix this morale issue if we give him a chance. For now we have to be very careful. For instance, the House limits their travel again, even lower than the President recommends. Does it ever occur to anyone that the great scientists travel? Was that ever an astonishing conclusion? If you did not know it, let me tell you: Great scientists travel. They love to go to conventions and conferences to share ideas. And if you say to a young crop of the best scientists in America: Come and work at Los Alamos, but you had better remember that you can only make one trip a year--well, what they are telling us already is: Hey, I have a company that doesn't limit me. They are offering me some stock options. They want me to come. Pay isn't a problem. We pay our scientists pretty well at these laboratories, as a matter of fact. I must tell you, if they like their work they will stay there. So my concern is a very serious one. We could not do what I think we must do and live with the House number on defense in this bill. We are $600 million higher than the House. We tell the Senate that with much pride because you have to give these laboratories what they need. Let me give you just one area. The National Laboratory structure, with reference to nuclear weapons, is in need of an entire new, let's say, 10-year plan for rebuilding ancient buildings. I use the word ``ancient'' because some of them are so old that if you could apply the historic preservation statutes in the State of New Mexico, some of them would be untouchable because they are too old. That is how old they are. I do not want to tell you how old. But it is not very old to be labeled ``old'' anymore if you are a building. But we started a plan. We started an approach for $100 million in this bill, to start some of that--for lack of a better word, we will call it infrastructure. But it is buildings; it is equipment. We must go on beyond that for a few years and get the nuclear weapons complex, so to speak, built up or decide we are going to have an inferior one. We would not be able to tell Americans the best people work there. The best brainpower of America is devoted to making sure our nuclear weapons are right and safe. As we lower the numbers--which we are going to be doing; that, we can all say--even with lower numbers, we know what we are doing. We do not have to have tests because we know they are safe. If we do not, I am going to support people who come to the floor and say: Let's start testing again. Have no doubt about it. We voted in the Mark Hatfield amendment to start a moratorium. We are doing it unilaterally. They are saying: Why don't we sign the treaty? We are not doing any testing by statute right now. So these great scientists have to substitute brainpower and equipment for what underground testing used to give them, with information about the adequacy, the safety, the reliability. Now we have to do it by computers, by new machines, new, fantastic x- ray machines that look inside bombs. We had better have the very best people in America working there, wouldn't you think? I would. My distinguished friend from Nevada wants to speak. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DOMENICI. I would be pleased to do that even if it were not glowing but, since it is, I am delighted.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the distinguished Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, for what he has said, and I echo the compliments. I think the Senator from Vermont understands the delicate position we are in this year in that the nondefense portion of this appropriations bill is inadequate to cover the nondefense research and water projects we ought to be covering in the bill. I believe when we were able to almost match the Senator's and his cosponsors' request on solar and wind, they understand we are hopeful when we get to conference of getting some additional money from the budget and the appropriators for the nondefense portion of this bill which will make it easier for us to keep this and hold it all the way through. I have been sure and careful to explain that to the Senator from Vermont. I am sure he is aware of it. I wanted to put it in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I recall coming to the floor when we considered the military construction appropriations bill. My friend, the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl, recalls that. The military construction bill came to the floor and we told the Senate how we worked for over a month, in a bipartisan manner, to provide the administration with tools to improve fuel reduction in the wildland and urban interface; that is, urban interface areas for communities that are at risk. I understand the distinguished Senator, Mr. Kyl from Arizona, has some very excellent portrayals of what happens to forests that are attended to and cleared as compared with those we leave unattended and then have a fire. Unfortunately, the administration threatened to veto the legislation we worked on because they found some of the suggestions too hot to handle. However, my colleagues found the suggestions very prudent, and later accepted my amendment to the Interior appropriations bill, which is where we finally were able to offer it. It was offered there as an emergency measure and received huge bipartisan support. Throughout the United States, there is an increasing amount of land in what natural resource scientists and firefighting experts call wildland-urban interface. This is very important because if that burns, not only do we lose forests, but we lose communities, we lose villages, we lose watersheds right close to cities which have a propensity to destroy the water supply as the trees in the watershed burn. Many millions of acres--according to the General Accounting Office estimate, 39 million acres or more--of national forests are at high risk of wildfires. Over August--it was not a luxury; normally visiting my State is a privilege and a luxury--I had to go there to visit fire-devastated communities, and in particular one, Los Alamos, but also some smaller ones. One of the communities is named Weed, where a couple hundred people came with their concerns because they are so frightened about what is happening to the forests on which they live, work, and from which they used to make a living. As of today, there are over 52 fires burning over 1,000 acres each across this country. The total number of acres burned this year is 223 percent of the 10- year-to-date average. On Labor Day, almost 17,000 acres burned--on that one day. Close to half a million acres have burned in my State this year; many more in other States, including the States of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and others. When we first started working on this measure, the administration believed there was too much national environmental special interest group opposition to my mild fuel-reduction amendment. But I wanted to ensure that we did not just throw money at the problem and say we solved the threat to our communities. We gave them, in that amendment, $240 million in emergency funding to work on hazardous fuel reduction. Actually, since that amendment, which will be in conference under the chairmanship of Senator Gorton, there have been many more fires that have occurred. Much more evidence has been discerned with reference to communities that are right up next to forests that are loaded with kindling on the ground, ready to make a small fire into a monstrous fire. The language in that amendment provides the land management agencies additional authority that they now lack to do some of this fuel reduction work. We asked them, at their sole discretion, to do this work in a way that would provide jobs to local people, opportunities to private, nonprofit, or cooperating entities, such as youth conservation corps, and opportunities for small and micro businesses. We asked the two Secretaries involved to identify those communities where hazard reduction activities were already underway or could be commenced by the end of the calendar year. We further asked the Secretaries to describe, by May of the coming year, the roadblocks to beginning hazardous fuel reduction work in the remaining communities at risk. I can tell you about some of the communities in my State because our State forester had no hesitation to find out this information. He went out to find it. We have an excellent State forestry department and an excellent State forester. They found the Ruidoso area, an area many people visit, has a very serious threat in terms of heavy pine scattered throughout the areas and residue on the ground of a very high kindling nature. In Santa Fe, the water supply is in immediate jeopardy. The growing East Mountain communities of Albuquerque are facing significant fire hazards. The Middle Rio Grande Bosque--a green area, a greenbelt along our river, the Rio Grande--and the Espanola area, increasingly face the threat of out-of-control fire; that is, federal forests that are not cleaned up, forests that have not been paid any attention to in terms of management. Los Alamos was deeply impacted by the Cerro Grande fire and will have the continued threat in unburned canyons. We have all seen on television the terrible pictures of personal devastation from that area where more than 400 people were left without residences. Some were in duplexes that were burned to the ground. We have to pay for those because that fire was started by a Park Service employee who made a very serious mistake. I think we are all aware of that. That actually happened. I want to summarize my remarks by suggesting that it is still very interesting to me how the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Babbitt, can come out to the West and say some of the things he does. President Clinton's Interior Department has been in charge of many federal lands--along with Agriculture Department, in charge of the forests for as long as Clinton has been President. I say to my friend from the State of Arizona, soon that will be 8 years. They have been in control of: How should we manage? What should we cut? What should we do with these forests? It is interesting that Mr Babbitt would come out West and say: This administration is not responsible for any of this; it comes from administrations before this one. Frankly, how many years would it take this administration to fix the problems in the management of the forests? I have listened to my good friend, the chairman of the subcommittee that handles this issue in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I heard him talk about what the Federal Government has done and not done. I have not heard anything about a major effort to clean up the forests. In fact, I think it has been to the contrary. I think there has been a fear that if you clean this up, you are logging. If you clean up the stuff on the ground so it will not burn, you are putting people to work in rural areas; and you are supporting this idea that there are many uses for forests, you are making it a reality--where this administration wants to push more to only public use rather than any private use. I say to the Secretary of the Interior--and I certainly have not heard Secretary Glickman say this--but for him to come out West and say this didn't happen on their watch seems to me to be skating on very thin ice in terms of the reality of things. What do we have now? What we have now is a Presidential election. Vice President Gore is running, and many of us think most of these policies were run through his staff for their ``environmental'' validity. I think it would be nice to know, since the Secretary of the Interior denies that this administration and our Vice President, who many know was in charge of a lot of environmental policies--where was he on all these fire danger issues? More importantly, where will he be if he is elected? I cannot believe that if a set of questions were put to him-- and we can't do that--he will answer them only if he wants to and only if they write them up a certain way. What did you do during your 8 years with reference to this problem, and if you are elected, what will you do during the next 4 years? Be very specific. Wouldn't it be something if you asked: Do you support a policy saying you can not put a road in the forest, even to stop the fire? I don't know if he would answer that. The policy in this country now appears to be not to put any roads in. In my State they have told me that in the overgrown Santa Fe watershed, they don't believe they are allowed to put a road a half mile up--even a temporary one--to thin a rather steep slope, which you cannot get to from the main road. There are many frustrating stories like that. We hear stories about the federal land management agencies concerned with ``protecting'' certain things on the ground before you use a Caterpillar to stop a fire. Frankly, to me, the results make that policy an adversity, because in order to save some resources, the result is ironically thousands and thousands of acres of burned forests and damaged resources. So which is the more prudent policy? To try to stop the fire early on at a quarter of its entirety using mechanized equipment, or let the whole thing burn and look back on it and say we didn't touch any of the ground with a tractor or any equipment, but we sure burned the forest down? These are very important issues. Where do we go next? I submit that Congress is going to see--even in the few days it has-- that that $240 million as an emergency comes out of that conference. I think some Senators are getting some estimates about the environmental restoration cost for some of these forests that burned in the State of Senator Kyl, and certainly in the distinguished chairman's State, and in the State of Montana and others. What will it cost to go back and rehabilitate and make them grow again? That surely is a great American emergency. Do we want to leave these millions of acres with only the stark reality of a fire? Millions of trees are standing that are burned. Do we want to leave them all there until they rot away? Don't we want to say that as part of a rehabilitation plan, we ought to remove some of them? Frankly, I will give you one example. We have a little community in Otero County called Alamogordo. It had one nice lumber mill, which just closed. Do you know what is around it? A very big fire that we reported here on the floor. Around the small town of Weed, near that closed sawmill, stands millions of burned trees with about 25 percent of their utility gone. We have not yet decided to remove one of those trees and to put somebody back to work in that lumber mill because of the policies the Senator from Idaho was speaking of. We need plans. I agree. But we also need to put the money up so the plans and the work be done quickly, in my opinion. One of the biggest and most important things we can do in the coming weeks is to provide this to the administration and say, ``Get started.'' Clearly, they won't accomplish a great deal, but the sooner we get started the better. I understand Senator Kyl has an expert in his State who has worked on the issue of how much good can we do in cleaning up the forests, so that we have some fire prevention, instead waiting around and then trying to put out a devastating fire. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I hereby submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office under Section 308(b) and in aid of Section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. This report meets the requirements for Senate scorekeeping of Section 5 of S. Con. Res. 32, the First Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for 1986. This report shows the effects of congressional action on the budget through July 26, 2000. The estimates of budget authority, outlays, and revenues are consistent with the technical and economic assumptions of the 2001 Concurrent Resolution on the Budget (H. Con. Res. 290), which replaced the 2000 Concurrent Resolution on the Budget (H. Con. Res. 68). The estimates show that current level spending is above the budget resolution by $17.5 billion in budget authority and by $20.6 billion in outlays. Current level is $28 million below the revenue floor in 2000. Since my last report, dated June 20, 2000, the Congress has cleared, and the President has signed, the Military Construction Appropriations Act, fiscal year 2001 (P.L. 106-246). This action changed the 2000 current level of budget authority and outlays. I ask unanimous consent to have a letter dated July 27, 2000 and its accompanying tables printed in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent Pete Lyons, a fellow in my office, and Dave Hunter with Senator Jeffords' office, be given privileges of the floor for the duration of the consideration of the energy and water development bill.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, section 206(b) of H. Con. Res. 290 (the FY2001 Budget Resolution) requires the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee to adjust the allocation for the Appropriations Committee and the appropriate budgetary aggregates when the requirements of that section are met. Sec. 5108 of P.L. 106-246, the 2001 Military Construction Appropriations bill, and Sec. 8150 of P.L. 106-259, the 2001 Department of Defense Appropriations bill, satisfy the requirements of section 206(b) of H. Con. Res. 290. I hereby submit revisions to the 2001 Senate Appropriations Committee allocations, pursuant to section 302 of the Congressional Budget Act, in the following amounts: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Budget authority Outlays ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Current Allocation: General purpose $541,738,000,000 $554,360,000,000 discretionary.......... Highways................ .................... 26,920,000,000 Mass transit............ .................... 4,639,000,000 Mandatory............... 327,787,000,000 310,215,000,000

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, with respect to the consent agreement relating to consideration of S. 1608, that time allowed for vitiation be extended to no later than 12 noon on Thursday, September 7.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask to speak for 30 seconds.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank Senator Reid for his comments and his cooperation. We still have a few days to go. The picture presented with reference to the nondefense portion of this bill, in particular, is absolutely true. I cannot figure why the House and Senate in their overall scope of allocating money continue to underallocate for nondefense when Senators and House Members probably request more of us in the nondefense part of this bill than any bill, except perhaps the interior appropriations bill. The Senator mentions 1,000 requests. Those have to do with projects or programs or activities for dams that are clearly within reason as things we should do. I am working hard and will continue to work hard to try to get additional allocation before we complete the conference. I hope we can. Obviously if we cannot, with what the House has appropriated this will be a bad overall result for the nondefense part of the Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. As in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the Injunction of Secrecy be removed from the following treaties and protocols transmitted to the Senate on September 5, 2000, by the President of the United States: Treaty with Costa Rica on Return of Vehicles and Aircraft (Treaty Document No. 106-40); Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement (Treaty Document 106-41); Investment Treaty with Lithuania (Treaty Document No. 106-42); Protocol Amending the 1950 Consular Convention with Ireland (Treaty Document No. 106-43); Treaty with Panama on the Return of Vehicles and Aircraft (Treaty Document No. 106-44). I further ask consent that the treaties and protocols be considered as having been read the first time; that they be referred, with accompanying papers, to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed; and that the President's messages be printed in the Record.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, clearly I appreciate the distinguished minority leader's cooperation in getting this bill up. I appreciate the tone of his comments in that he desires apparently to get this bill and other bills passed. I hope that is true. I say to the Senate, I will do my best to try to finish this bill tomorrow night. I don't know of a lot of real difficult amendments. There are some important amendments for regions of the country and otherwise. Clearly, I have seen no amendments thus far that attack the substance of this bill which I will explain shortly. Mr. President, what is not said by the minority leader, in an effort to analyze the entire Presidential election and what is going on here in the Congress as of this moment, first, on tax reform measures that the Republicans have proposed, call them what you may. Of course, the distinguished Senator, minority leader, chooses to call them so-called marriage penalty reform. Between 35 and 45 million American couples are affected by that bill. Affected how? Their taxes will go down for no other reason than we will eliminate a penalty currently imposed just because they are married. Whether we have some other people covered in it or not, let me suggest we know what it will cost in 5 years. We know what it will cost in 10 years to the Treasury if we give back a little bit of money to the married couples in America who are getting taxed extra just because they are married. What else did we pass? We passed a 10-year phase-in of the death tax. Surely those on the other side know that by definition the only people who pay a death tax--that is, a tax on death--are people who have accumulated some assets. So they could all be called rich. Essentially, the current law of America says if, after your mother and father have worked their whole lives and have acquired four drugstores and own a house and have invested in a piece of property, if that ends up being $10 million--I am speaking to Americans who might have worked 40 years--right now the Government can take as much as 65 percent of it upon their death. That is the question. Is that right? Does America want that? Or should we ask our President to sign a bill that phases that out over 10 years? I happen to have looked at numbers to see how they relate one to another in this budget process. My estimates are as follows: Both of those taxes combined cannot be risky to America. Why can't they be? Because they amount to somewhere between 10 percent and 12 percent of the surplus--10 percent to 12 percent of the surplus, the non-Social Security surplus which is $3.4 trillion. The same people who say that is risky have on the table at least five new programs that will spend more of the surplus than those two tax cuts. Are those programs therefore risky, because they spend more of the Federal surplus than these two tax reform measures? No. But neither are the tax cuts, just because they are tax reform measures. They are not risky just because they give people back some of their money. To those on the other side and the Vice President, who is running for President, they must be risky because they give back to the American people some real tax reform money. If we want to go on to debate whether the Vice President even has a plan to give Americans back any of their tax money, we can do that at any time. I am not on the tax writing committee, but I will volunteer. I will be here. And I can tell you right up front, very little of what the President proposes goes to taxpayers for tax relief. Almost all of it goes to Americans whom the Vice President chooses to give back money, by way of just giving them a check that matches or exceeds their own money, in a huge way. The largest transfer of wealth that we probably have ever seen is tucked away in what the Vice President calls tax cuts for the American people. Read the Washington Post editorial of 4 days ago. While they are quick to criticize Republicans, they have a very good paragraph in the middle of their editorial saying: Mr. Vice President, Democrats, why do you insist on telling the taxpayers, including middle income taxpayers, how they should spend the tax dollars you want to give them back? The Washington Post says: If you want to give them a tax cut give them a tax cut. They don't do that. They create some new targeted programs. If you want to use them, you have to use it for college tuition. If you want to use it, you have to use it for this, that, or the other. Question: Don't some Americans have more concern about how to use it and where to use it, and would do that right, rather than to have the Government do that for you while making the Tax Code more complicated and claiming they are giving you tax relief? Frankly, I could answer many more of the questions but I will just do the issues raised by the minority leader, and I will only address one. The President of the United States has never attempted to seriously do a bipartisan Medicare prescription bill--never. He has sent us his own, but never has negotiated with Republicans. The one time we had a bipartisan committee, since you required a supermajority, he pulled his support so it would not have a supermajority--yet it had a majority, bipartisan, for a major reform and prescription drug bill. So one of the reasons most of the things not getting done are not getting done is because they have become so partisan that the other side of the aisle says, ``Our way or no way.'' The President says, ``My way or no way.'' The Vice President says, ``I am running for President and here is what I propose. It will be that way or no way.'' That is what the American people will find out, I hope, as we debate these issues in an effort in the next 5 weeks to resolve many of them. And I hope we do.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent for 3 minutes to comment on the comments of Senator Daschle after a few brief remarks.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 1102 be referred to the Committee on Finance.