Pete Domenici

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Thank you. Fellow Senators, I suggest to you, the Chair has ruled that what the Senator seeks to do is out of order. We did establish right after we started this bill that amendments had to be filed at the desk so everybody could look at them. As you look at that sequence of things, a motion to send this back to committee with instructions was out of order; so those who want the Senator to win could not have won anyway. Now he wants to just send it back to committee. The Chair has once again ruled that is out of order. How far do we have to go? As a matter of fact, we have already taken care of renewables better than almost any other nondomestic piece of this budget. We have reduced, by 24 percent, items such as cleanup, nondefense cleanup, in this country because we do not have enough money this year. We are $600 million short. We have only reduced this function by 2.8 percent. We reduce the Corps of Engineers by 8 percent, the Bureau of Reclamation by 3 percent. The total nondefense has been reduced by 7 percent. We have prioritized well. As a matter of fact, if this amendment passes, we will be giving renewables a 14-percent priority over the rest of the nondefense programs of this country which, on average, have been cut 7 percent, because this would ask to increase it by 7. I believe it should be tabled. I hope we will do that expeditiously. I thank Senator Reid for his attentiveness and his stick-to-itiveness on this. I believe we have treated renewables fairly. I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes.

Mr. DOMENICI. I just want to share with my fellow Senators the reality of what has happened to solar energy in this bill. First of all, in the Senate bill, for everything in this bill that is nondefense, there is a reduction of 7 percent. That means that for all of the things we do in water, in the Corps of Engineers, and all the other things, there is a 7 percent reduction. If we were to adopt this amendment, we would be taking this piece of the budget and increasing it 7 percent, thus giving it a 14 percent preferential treatment over the rest of the nondefense items in this bill. All we are doing in this bill is reducing from $365.9 million, reducing it by $12 million, which is less than a 3 percent reduction, which means this is already favored by way of prioritizing by about 5 percent better than the other nondefense accounts here. So we can talk all afternoon and into the night about how great renewables are; we can all agree; but that is not the issue. The issue is, should we add $70 million when we have had to reduce everything else that is nondefense by the huge amounts I have just described? I do not think we need to. Most of the things the Senator is discussing we will continue to do, and some that are in the pipeline ready to get done will get done because we are going to fund this at $353.9 million. That is not peanuts. Most of the solar things we want to do as a nation will get done. As long as everybody knows, we are not trying to be arbitrary. We thought we were very fair in the treatment of renewables in this bill. It was not enough. We had to add $70 million more with an amendment that was out of order because it added to the amount we had to spend in our allocation, which means it breaks the budget. I yield the floor. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOMENICI. I didn't say that.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask for the third reading.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have no objection.

Mr. DOMENICI. The subcommittee agrees that these projects after undergoing the intense scrutiny of the Congressional process for a number of years continue to prove their worth. I look forward to continuing to work on behalf of these and other priorities for Georgia.

Mr. DOMENICI. We have a technical amendment that stands in the way?

Mr. DOMENICI. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. DOMENICI. The Senator is correct.

Mr. DOMENICI. I offer my commitment as well that I will work with Senator Reid and the other members of the Subcommittee to do whatever I can to include sufficient funding for the Environmental Management program at DOE to allow for the full $5,000,000 for the Florida International University-DOE initiative.

Mr. DOMENICI. I am fully aware of the genuine interest the Senator has in this and his enthusiasm and his hard work. But I wonder if he might permit me to speak for 2 minutes and yield right back to him.

Mr. DOMENICI. Is that not the amendment that the Senator from New Mexico put in as a technical amendment early on? Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we go to that amendment and that it be considered.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DOMENICI. What is the request?

Mr. DOMENICI. I object.

Mr. DOMENICI. I will be pleased to respond to the distinguished Senator from Florida, Senator Mack.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise in support of the compromise Y2K liability bill before the Senate today. I want to commend my colleagues who have worked hard to put the Senate in position to pass this important legislation. After working for years to enact securities litigation reform, I know how tough it is to battle the trial lawyers. In fact, many of the same entrepreneurial lawyers who specialize in securities class actions have already begun to file Y2K class actions. Let there be no doubt that being a trial lawyer is big business. In anticipation of the problems associated with Y2K, lawyers have been putting on seminars on how to plead, try and negotiate Y2K lawsuits. Nearly 80 companies have already been hit by Y2K lawsuits. Y2K offers these enterprising lawyers a new litigation gold mine. If we do not pass this bill, estimates are that the litigation costs from the Y2K problem will be as much as $1.5 trillion. That exceeds the cost of the asbestos, breast implant, tobacco and Superfund lawsuits combined. Our economy is the envy of the world. High technology companies have done much to fuel the growth of the stock market in recent years, and they have provided millions of Americans high paying and rewarding jobs. The average high-tech wage is nearly 75% higher than the average private sector wage in the United States. These companies spend nearly $40 billion per year in research and development. I would rather see high-tech firms continue to spend their resources on their employees and on improving their products, rather than spend money on lawyers. And there is no doubt that deep-pocketed technology companies will be the most attractive potential defendants in abusive Y2K litigation. These companies proved to be the most attractive for entrepreneurial securities class action lawyers, and I have every reason to believe that they will find themselves in the lawyers' cross hairs once again if we don't enact this bill. Rather than turn our booming high tech economy over to the trial lawyers, this bill seeks to place some reasonable restraints on Y2K litigation. The focus of this bill is to encourage potential litigants to fix their Y2K problems without having to resort to the courts, and the lawyers. The bill would require a 90-day cooling off period to allow potential plaintiffs to offer a way to cure any Y2K defects which arise in their products. This is a reasonable alternative to the ``rush to the courthouse'' atmosphere which might prevail without this legislation. I am also pleased to see that the drafters of this bill have chosen to include the proportionate liability provisions from the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 in this bill. These provisions, taken from the bill Senators Dodd, D'Amato and I passed into law, are the essence of fairness in tort reform. Who can argue with the concept that defendants should only be responsible for the portion of damages corresponding to their actual fault in any given case? I guess the trial lawyers might argue with that idea, but few others would. Finally, I want to say a word about punitive damages. I think the drafters of this bill have done all they can, and compromised as much as possible on the issue of punitive damages. At this point, unless you are a small business, there is no limit in this bill on punitive damages, if the plaintiff can prove by clear and convincing evidence that the applicable standard for punitives has been met. In my view, I would have liked to see this bill further cap punitive damages. Punitive damages are designed to deter future wrongful conduct, but it has been shown that they serve relatively little deterrent purpose. This is particularly true in Y2K cases, where the problem is one that is fixable the first time it is discovered. Since we cannot have another ``millennium problem'' for another thousand years, I fail to see how punitive damages should apply in any Y2K case. Former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, in describing punitive damages generally many years ago, noted that they invited ``punishment so arbitrary as to be virtually random.'' Justice Powell wisely has commented that because juries can impose virtually limitless punitive damages, they act as ``legislator and judge, without the training, experience, or guidance of either.'' Justice Powell didn't know about the Y2K problem when he wrote these words, but they still ring true in this debate here today. While many of us would have liked to see this bill go farther in a few areas, I believe that some lawsuit reform is better than no reform at all. Rather than let the trial lawyers run out the clock, the drafters have done a fine job reaching a compromise. This bill is a reasoned approach to the problem- one that emphasizes cooperation, not litigation and puts our economic growth and our high-tech businesses ahead of greedy trial lawyers. I am happy to support it. I thank my colleagues for yielding me time, I again commend the drafters of this bill, and I yield the floor.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I will reserve the remainder of my time for closing. Since we are trying to defend against an assault here, we want to speak last. Mr. GRAMM addressed the Chair.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. All the time has expired except for 5 minutes for the Senator from New Mexico; is that correct?

Mr. DOMENICI. Then we will vote?

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, let me remind everyone that this would have been a great argument 3 weeks ago when the Senate passed, with an overwhelming vote, a supplemental appropriations bill that had this precise bill in it. A vast majority of Senators voted in favor of the Emergency Supplemental bill. So we already passed it. All of a sudden, steel and oil and gas become a very bad thing. But we already passed it overwhelmingly. We sent it over to the House to go to conference. The Senate Conferees wanted their loan programs. The House was dead set against it. Because of these loan programs the Emergency Supplemental for Kosovo and Hurricane Mitch was deadlocked. The Senate conferees said, all right, let's pass the Emergency bill without the loan provisions but let's take it back to the Senate, and when it gets back to the Senate, let's vote it out and take it to conference with the House so we can finally resolve the debate that started weeks ago in conference. Frankly, the air tight lockbox that everybody thinks will really tie up Social Security forever--I want to confess, I invented it, I dreamt it up. But, you know, every time we turn around now for the next 6 or 8 months, as we work our way through, where is the lockbox? Do we really have one, or don't we? We will hear this ``plundering'' heard--led by the Senator from Texas--that we are plundering. If you divide $270 million by 10 years, we are plundering it to the extent of $27 million a year. If you want to look at the reality of things, in order to say to the oil patch in the United States, which already has lost over 56,400 jobs out of an estimated 340,700 jobs just since October 1997. With oil patch in crisis our rural communities are dying on the vine. Those who service the oil industry in the field--not the Exxons and the Texacos-- going broke or belly up because they can't get loans, we are not going to fix that. But I submit that if you are worried about making loans, we make hundreds of millions in loans for agriculture. We voted $6 billion or $8 billion in supplemental emergency funds for agriculture. If you don't think the U.S. Government lends money to business, just go look at the Small Business Administration, where hundreds of thousands of dollars are loaned to small business on 90 percent guarantees. Guess what. They are making it. There is no gigantic default rate. They are being helped to get into business and succeed. Frankly, from my standpoint, it just appeared to me, as a Senator from oil patch, that essentially if we are going to help other people, then I just want to try to see in the Senate if you would like to help the industry that is a core fundamental of any industrialized economy-- the production of oil and gas in the United States, which is withering on the vine, and dependence is going through the roof. Our foreign oil dependence is now 57 percent. Senator Nickles mentioned the steel program of the late 1970's. It was a small, unstructured, ad hoc program. I believe there were a grand total of five loans made. We sit here tonight and equate this to an era in American corporate history when inflation was 18 percent, interest rates were 20 percent, and my friend from Texas says because that program didn't work very well we shouldn't try again. That experience is a lesson, but frankly, it is irrelevant. The steel industry of today bears no resemblance to the steel industry of the 1970s. Our economy today, bears no resemblance to the economy then. Interest rates and default rates by American companies are nowhere near what they were then. The failure of business to default is all over the guarantee program in America. The failure is very small, because the economy is strong and they are able to pay their loans back. So Senators on my side of the aisle can feel free to vote against this measure as a matter of substance. But I believe in fairness to having passed these bills already--we committed to go to conference with the House to see what they would do--we ought to invoke cloture so as to delay this bill for the shortest period of time possible. It could be amended post cloture, but at least we won't be here killing the bill that is exactly what I have outlined--a revote on something we already voted for. I am not going to argue the economic condition of oil patch, because some of the Senators on my side of the aisle, and a few on that side of the aisle, already know that the United States, in terms of oil patch, those people who service oil wells, they are experiencing a total economic collapse. If we can't see fit to put $500 million on the books that can be loaned to them, and have to argue about the philosophy of loans by the Federal Government and the default rate of 25 year ago, then, frankly, I believe oil patch has the right to conclude that we just don't care. I yield the floor. Cloture Motion

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise to congratulate Los Alamos County on its 50th anniversary. This small northern New Mexico county has packed an amazing number of contributions into its short history. Los Alamos had already completed its momentous contributions during the Second World War, when it was officially created in 1949. But the work of Los Alamos and its contributions to national security were far from completed. Few might have anticipated that the nuclear stockpile created at Los Alamos would lead to an unprecedented five decades free of massive global conflict. During those five decades, the nuclear weapons of the United States have provided time for the world's leaders to strive toward global peace. Today they still serve as the ultimate guarantor of our precious freedoms. Throughout the County's history, its support for the national security objectives of Los Alamos National Laboratory has never wavered. The success of the lab is completely intertwined with the success and history of the County. As we've advanced toward world peace, admittedly with steps far smaller than all of us would wish, the County has supported dramatic changes at the laboratory, from changing characteristics of our nuclear stockpile to new challenges that the laboratory was called upon to address. For example, in 1949, most of the non-proliferation and environmental challenges that the lab addresses today did not exist. I believe it is also important to note on this anniversary that the time of the closed secret city has long passed, and Los Alamos County has now become a community open to scientific and economic growth and cultural diversity. Today, the lab and the surrounding County are making wonderful strides toward becoming fuller partners in the Espanola Valley and with all of New Mexico. Los Alamos County and the laboratory have a wealth of challenges ahead as national priorities are modified to adapt to new global conditions. The future of Los Alamos County should be as bright as its past, and the range of its contributions will continue to be of vital importance in guaranteeing the nation's freedoms.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the drug problem which is plaguing the northern part of my home state--a problem which has had particularly profound effects on the quality of life and the health of the citizens in an area known as Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Simply put, Rio Arriba County faces one of the most severe black tar heroin epidemics this nation has ever seen. In recent years, there have been 44 heroin overdose deaths in this small county--more per capita than any other area of the country. Last year, New Mexico led the nation in per capita heroin overdose deaths, and Rio Arriba County led New Mexico. Just this weekend, one of the local papers printed a story about the black tar heroin epidemic in northern New Mexico, and the reporter interviewed several heroin addicts. Two of these addicts died of overdoses between the time they were interviewed and the time the story was printed. That is how acute the problem is. Rio Arriba County is a rural community with close to 40,000 inhabitants. Many of those who reside in this small county have family who have lived there for several generations. Neighbors don't just know each other--they know each other's entire families and their family's history in the area. This is a close-knit community, one which recognizes that it must band together to beat this problem. Families, political leaders, community institutions and public safety and heath experts must work together in cooperative fashion to rid this area of the scourge of heroin. Earlier this year, I mentioned this problem to Attorney General Janet Reno, and she committed to help coordinate the federal response to the heroin epidemic in northern New Mexico. After speaking with Attorney General Reno, I later convened a field hearing in Espanola, New Mexico in Rio Arriba County to begin to bring people together at the local, state and federal levels to see what could be done. The hearing was held under the auspices of the Commerce, State, Justice subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Senator Gregg. I want to thank Senator Gregg for agreeing to the hearing, and for his commitment to providing the necessary federal resources to begin to address the problem. At the field hearing, we heard from Laurie Robinson, Associate Attorney General for Justice Programs, who has since sent a technical assistance team to the area to meet with state and local officials, treatment providers, and community groups in order to begin to formulate a comprehensive plan to attack the problem. This technical assistance team returns to the county this week to continue its efforts, and I expect them to issue an action plan by mid-July. This plan will include recommendations on how the county can best coordinate local drug treatment and intervention efforts, and take advantage of new federal resources made available in recent months. I want to commend the Department of Justice, Attorney General Reno, and her partners in this effort--the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as well as New Mexico's Department of Health and Human Services, which has worked closely with the federal team. Their comprehensive effort will ensure that we don't simply throw money at this problem and hope that it goes away. I believe that the strategy they produce will have a lasting, positive impact on the substance abuse problem in Rio Arriba County. The strategy will include new federal resources for prevention, treatment and law enforcement, and I want to outline federal efforts to date to combat this problem. In addition to bringing in the Department of Justice team to coordinate federal resources, in April, I convinced the Senate to include $750,000 in the emergency supplemental appropriations bill to allow Rio Arriba, Santa Fe and San Juan counties to participate in the New Mexico High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA). Expanding the New Mexico HIDTA will allow state and local law enforcement officials to enhance their efforts to rid northern New Mexico of drug traffickers, many of whom are Mexican nationals who bring the heroin to New Mexico through the crime corridor between the southwest border and Rio Arriba County. Because a crime corridor exists in New Mexico, with the help of Senator Gregg, the Committee also included $5 million in this year's Commerce, State, Justice appropriations bill for a pilot project through the United States Attorney's office in New Mexico. Much of the heroin brought into northern New Mexico comes up Interstate 10 from Mexico between Las Cruces and Albuquerque. This pilot project will allow the U.S. Attorney to undertake federal prosecutions of illegal immigration and drug trafficking along that corridor. It is patterned after a similar successful initiative, called Project Exile, which significantly reduced illegal gun smuggling and violent crime in the corridor between Camden, New Jersey and Philadelphia. Solving this problem will take more than just increased law enforcement. It also is critically important that we give children healthy and safe alternatives to drugs and crime. With Chairman Gregg's help, the Senate Appropriations Committee has provided $750,000 for an after-school program in Rio Arriba, and increased funding for the Boys' and Girls' Clubs nationwide. Northern New Mexico has long faced a true shortage of worthwhile crime and drug abuse prevention programs, particularly for children. We need to provide kids with constructive outlets for their time and energy, so they do not become the next generation of addicts. I think that our efforts here recently are going to change that for the better. Finally, let me talk a little bit about treatment, because that is the most difficult problem the county faces. Currently, there are 66 treatment beds in Rio Arriba County. Yet, all but six of them are reserved for alcoholics. There is no in-patient treatment for heroin addicted kids and no detox facility in Rio Arriba. So the county has a long way to go in dealing with the special health care needs of heroin addicts. To assist with the efforts, I have requested $2 million from the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services to help expand drug treatment and prevention services in the county. Also, the state of New Mexico has provided $500,000 for increased drug treatment in the area. Successful treatment programs require more than a one-time infusion of federal or state funds. Communities, state and local governments and treatment providers must work together to keep them viable and operational once facilities are established. Federal dollars can help, but the bulk of the effort must come at the state and local level. A big part of what the technical assistance team I have sent to Rio Arriba County is doing is figuring out how to coordinate federal, state and local treatment resources, and how to make these treatment options available for many years to come. This is a critical component in the strategy we have begun to develop. As I see it, the federal response to the drug problem in Rio Arriba County has been swift and comprehensive. We have done much more in a short amount of time than simply throw money at the problem. We have begun to build upon the three main components of any successful anti- drug strategy: law enforcement, treatment and prevention, and the Department of Justice and other federal agencies have begun the process of working with the local community to improve in all three areas in Rio Arriba County. It is my hope that in a few years, after our efforts and ideas have been implemented, we will look to northern New Mexico as an example of how small rural communities can overcome big drug problems. We have a long way to go, but I look forward to continuing my efforts to defeat the heroin problem in Rio Arriba County and help this proud community get it back on its feet. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. DOMENICI

Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I thank the ranking minority member for his cooperation. This package includes some amendments that are from his side of the aisle and some from our side, which continues to make this a very bipartisan bill. I yield the floor.