Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am from one of those Dakotas.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, thank you. Mr. President we are now returning to the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, which is a very important policy issue before the Senate. My expectation is we will complete work today. I had noticed two amendments; and I shall not offer the amendments today, to the relief of those who are counting the amendments that are ahead of us. But I did want to take the floor to at least describe especially the substitute amendment, because while I will not offer it to this bill, this is really a debate about policy. This policy will not mean anything until it is funded. The real debate will be on the appropriations, it seems to me. What is it we want to buy and pay for? We can talk until we are blue in the face, but if we are not willing in an appropriations process to pay for a policy, it is not going to be deployed. Let me talk a bit about that. My substitute amendment will be something that I will likely offer during an appropriations debate and will wait until that day for a vote. The proposition before the Senate offered by my colleague, Senator Cochran, is very simple. Yesterday, I was holding something from Senator Lott and when I was referring to Senator Cochran I called him Senator Lott, for which I apologized. I certainly know the difference, and I respect both of them immensely. Senator Cochran has offered a proposal on the floor of the Senate that says it shall be the policy of this country to deploy a national missile defense system as soon as technologically feasible. In other words, notwithstanding other issues, as soon as it is technologically feasible to put a national missile defense system in place, we should do so. What is this national missile defense system? We had one once, 24 years ago, in my home State. This country built the only antiballistic missile system that was ever built in the free world. Members ought to see the concrete that was poured, this huge concrete building in northeastern North Dakota, a sparsely populated region of our State, where the ABM, antiballistic missile, system was built. In today's dollars it costs about $20 billion. It was declared operational 1 day and mothballed the very next day. It produced a lot of good jobs in northeastern North Dakota as a result, a lot of construction, a lot of building. But what did we get for our money? And was a national ballistic missile defense system feasible 24 years ago? The answer, I suppose, is yes. We had a national ballistic missile site built and declared operational 24 years ago, so it was feasible. It used a different technology. The proposition was if we were attacked by some incoming missile from some hostile power, we would send up these antiballistic missiles with nuclear warheads on our missiles and we would shoot off a nuclear warhead somewhere in the heavens and we would destroy all the incoming missiles. That was the technology then, and we built it--paid a lot of money for it--and it was declared mothballed the day after it was operational. Now the proposition is that the national missile defense is a different kind of technology. It has the ability to hit a bullet, a speeding bullet, with another bullet. That is the proposition. We have had a lot of tests--a few successful, most unsuccessful. It is a very difficult proposition. The experts in the Department of Defense tell us that they have spent as much money as they can spend to pursue the technology to build a national missile defense system, but the technology does not yet exist. Now, when the technology does exist, what kind of consideration should exist in terms of its deployment? Russia has a lot of weaponry; Russia, of course, is the dominant country in what was the old Soviet Union. Their weaponry consists of a great many nuclear warheads on top of intercontinental ballistic missiles and bombers. We need to be concerned about those. As a result of that, we have engaged with the old Soviet Union and now Russia in a regime of arms reductions. Arms control talks resulted in START I and START II. The Russians, we hope, are prepared very soon to adopt START II. We have already done so. As a result of all of that, yesterday I held up part of the wing of a Russian bomber. Last year, I held up a metal flange from the door of, I believe, an SS-19, an intercontinental ballistic missile that held a nuclear warhead, a missile aimed at the United States. Yesterday, I held up at this desk a wing strut from a Russian bomber; one would have expected in the cold war that the only way you would hold a piece of a Russian bomber in your hand is if somebody shot it down in hostile action. That wasn't the case. I held up a piece of a wing from a bomber from Russia that used to carry nuclear weapons that would threaten our country because the wing was sawed off that bomber. Who sawed the wing off of the bomber? Was a wing shot off in hostile aerial combat? No, not at all. It was sawed off as the bomber was on the ground, because part of the agreement between us and the Soviet Union is that they would reduce the number of missiles, reduce the number of warheads, reduce the number of bombers, and so would we. The result is these arms reductions have resulted in significant reductions in the number of nuclear warheads, the number of missiles, the number of bombers, the number of delivery systems. That is a success. I also talked last fall about the Russian launch of a number of intercontinental ballistic missiles early in the morning, and as those Russian missiles lifted off in the early morning and pierced into the sky, one could have wondered what on Earth was happening in our world-- a launch of significant numbers of ICBMs by the Russians. But it didn't worry the United States because those missiles were launched and destroyed in the area by prior agreement--part of arms control, something we agreed upon--that they destroy their missiles. Isn't it much better to destroy their missiles by taking them apart, pinching the metal and putting them in a warehouse, or sawing the wings off their bombers? Isn't it better to destroy a weapon before it is used? That is precisely what arms control is all about. The question I ask about this country's national missile defense policy is not whether we should have one--we likely will have a national missile defense system at some point, some day, when it is technologically feasible, when it is financially practical, when it will not injure our arms control agreements and not threaten future agreements. We will likely have some kind of national missile defense system. We will likely have it because many are worried that a rogue nation now--not Russia, but a rogue nation; Saddam Hussein or North Korea testing medium-range missiles--a rogue nation gets ahold of an ICBM and puts a nuclear weapon on top of an ICBM and aims it at this country and fires it. What kind of a catcher's mitt do we have to intercept it and prevent it from hitting our country? We do not have some sort of technological catcher's mitt that goes into the heavens and intercepts that missile. Therefore, we need to have it, we are told. We didn't have that kind of a catcher's mitt to intercept missiles all during the cold war. How did we avoid having a missile fired at us by the Soviet Union? By an arsenal in the cold war that assured anyone who attacked us with nuclear weapons would be vaporized and destroyed immediately. That convinced virtually anyone who would have thought about launching a nuclear attack against this country, that convinced them it was very unwise to do so. No one would launch a nuclear attack against this country. Some might say that might still be the case. But suppose a madman in charge of some rogue nation who gets one ICBM; ought we not have the capability of intercepting that? The answer is yes. That is one of the threats. If you take a look at the kind of threats, one of the threats is that a rogue nation will get ahold of an ICBM--it is not likely but it could happen. They are more likely to get ahold of a cruise missile, which is much more prevalent--of course, the national missile defense system will not intercept a cruise missile--that could be launched off the coast about 20 or 50 miles, fly a few hundred feet above the ground. That is not what this is designed to protect against. Another area of threat is a suitcase nuclear bomb stuck in the trunk of an old rusty car at a New York City dock to terrorize this country. It doesn't do much about that. Another threat of mass destruction is a vial of the deadliest biological threats put on a subway in a major city. We have a variety of threats, not the least of which is that a foreign ruler, of a bizarre nation will get ahold of an intercontinental ballistic missile, but if that happens will we have a mechanism to intercept it? The answer is yes, I believe, we will. But we must do what we are doing now with substantial research and development into developing a technology that works, and then deploying it in a sensible way that says we are deploying a technology that works in a manner that is cost effective--not a blank check, not a break-the- bank approach--a technology that will work to offer real protection in a way that offers it at an affordable price and doing so in a way that will not jeopardize our arms control agreements that now reduce nuclear weapons. The amendment I had intended to offer says: (A) It is the policy of the United States to develop for potential deployment an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate). (b) It is the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense system if that system-- (1) is well managed, proven under rigorous and repeated testing, and cost-effective when assessed within the context of the other requirements relating to the national security interest of the United States; (2) is deployed in concert with a variety of additional measures to protect the United States against attack by weapons of mass destruction, including efforts toward arms reduction and weapons nonproliferation issues; and (3) is deployed in a manner that contributes to a cooperative relationship between the United States and Russia with respect to a reduction in the dangers to both countries posed by weapons of mass destruction. A final point: I want everybody to understand that I have supported and will continue to support substantial research and development on the issue of protecting against a missile attack against this country. That has never been the issue. The issue here is, when shall it be deployed and with what confidence will the American people feel they are protected? Now, to make one point about the last issue, one Russian missile, an SS-18, with 10 reentry vehicles--or 10 warheads--will not be able to be blocked by this national missile defense system. One MIRVed SS-18 will be able to defeat this national missile defense system because this system is designed to provide some kind of technological catcher's mitt to go up and grab one, two, three, perhaps four or five incoming warheads--but not 10. And so, as we proceed, we need to understand what we are doing, what the limits are, and how we should proceed in a manner designed to protect the efforts that now exist to destroy the SS-18s that Russia has in their silos through massive reductions in delivery systems and nuclear warheads. Anything we do in this country to upset that capability, to upset arms control regimes, to upset the progress we have made under Nunn-Lugar, the kind of stability that exists when you bring down the number of arms between the two major superpowers, anything we do to upset that, I think, would not be in this country's interest. Let me end where I began and say I was intending to offer this amendment, but I don't think I will offer it today inasmuch as two amendments were accepted yesterday to the Cochran legislation. I don't necessarily view those amendments quite the same as others do. Nonetheless, the feeling is that some of those amendments offer the capability of saying, yes, deployment must also be consistent with our arms control issues with the Russians and others and must not injure those efforts. It must be consistent with something that relates to sensible costs. This cannot be a blank-check approach. So I understand that, and because of those two amendments, I think it is better to leave this issue at this point and come back another day on the appropriations side to further discuss this policy. Now that the Senator from Mississippi, Senator Cochran, is on the floor, let me again say to him, I don't quarrel with the question of whether we ought to be aggressively pursuing this issue about a national missile defense. We should. We have had robust research and development. In fact, last fall, $1 billion was added--it wasn't asked for, but it was added--to DOD in the emergency legislation for national missile defense. I don't quarrel with a robust research and development effort. Nor would I quarrel with deployment. But deployment cannot stand alone. Deployment decisions by this country must be decisions made concurrent with issues about its impact on arms control, about not only the technological feasibility of being able to deploy a national missile defense system, but also the cost-effectiveness of it and a range of other issues. So, Mr. President, I shall not offer the two amendments that I had protected. I thank the Senator from Michigan for his good work on this legislation. I thank the Senator from Mississippi for raising important questions and for his courtesy. I yield the floor. Mr. WARNER addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am happy to join my colleague, Senator Conrad, on the introduction of the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999. We have previously introduced similar legislation. We worked on this legislation with the Governor of North Dakota, as well as the bi-partisan leadership in the State legislature in North Dakota, Tribal leaders, and many others. Republicans and Democrats together developed a piece of legislation that we think is not only good for our State and important for the State's long-term future, but which also completes the promise that was given our State many, many years ago. I will not talk about the specific provisions of the bill in a way that will duplicate information which has already been provided, but let me again describe the story, just for a moment. People say, Water projects--this is some kind of proposal to enrich your region of the country. Well, there is more to the story. In the 1940s, we had a wild Missouri River that would periodically flood in a very significant way, and in the downstream reaches of the river, Kansas City, MO, and elsewhere, areas would have massive spring flooding. The Federal Government said, Let's put some main stem dams on the Missouri River in order to control that flooding. As we put these dams on that river, we will also be able to generate electricity from those dams, so we will prevent flooding and provide electrical benefits. It will be a wonderful opportunity. North Dakota, your deal in this is to accept a flood that comes and stays every year. You take a half-million-acre flood that comes to your State and stays there forever. If you are willing to play host to a flood forever, we will make you a deal. We know it is not in your interest to say, please, bring us a permanent flood, so if you do that, we will make you a deal. Accept a flood--the size of the State of Rhode Island, by the way--and when that flood comes, you can take the water from behind the reservoir and move it around your State for water development and quality purposes. That was the original Garrison proposal. Now, that promise, that commitment has not been kept. The flood came; that part of the bargain has been kept. But we have not received the full flower of benefits that we would expect as a result of the Federal commitment. For that reason, we continue to insist that if your word is your bond and the Federal Government said take this flood and we will provide these benefits for your State, and we need these benefits for our State to be able to move good quality water around our State, for that reason we feel compelled to say to the Federal Government, finish the job. That is what this legislation is about. It is not, as some environmental organizations insist, some new billion-dollar project. It is not that at all. In fact, what we are doing will, in a minor way, reduce the authorized project that already exists as a result of the 1965 authorization and the 1986 authorization. This bill makes the final adjustments to this project. I have a series of charts which I will not go through, recognizing that the folks who are in charge of the timing of this institution want to go to lunch. Let me come back at a more appropriate time and go through all of my charts in great detail for the benefit of everyone. I will only say in closing that my colleague and I feel that this is a very important project and a bipartisan piece of legislation that will be good for this country, allow our country to keep its promise and will especially be a good investment for North Dakota. My prepared remarks on the Dakota Water Resources Act will explain these points in greater detail. Mr. President, the new bill has been substantially modified in the form of a substitute amendment (No. 3112) which we introduced on July 9, 1998. This revised bill represents a bi-partisan consensus carefully negotiated by the major elected officials in our State. It's a water development bill that I am proud to sponsor. It reduces Federal costs, meets environmental and international obligations, and fulfills the Federal promise to address North Dakota's contemporary water needs. This is still among the most important pieces of legislation I will introduce for my State. I emphasize once more that this is because the key to North Dakota's economic development is water resource management and development. And the key to water development in my State has come to be the Garrison Diversion Project in the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999. I want to share with my colleagues in greater detail the frustrating story of an unfulfilled promise to build a water project because some have questioned the rationale for the project. I want to explain why the people of North Dakota need and expect to have this promise fulfilled in the form of the Dakota Water Resources Act. Over 100 years ago, John Wesley Powell of the U.S. Geological Survey predicted to the North Dakota Constitutional Convention that the lean years in agriculture would cause ``thousands of people . . . (to) become discouraged and leave.'' He was referring to the difficulty of making a living on farms and ranches in a state with abundant water but limited rainfall. Unfortunately, Powell's prediction is as telling today as it was in the last century. Thousands of North Dakotans are leaving the State for economic opportunities in cities such as Denver and Minneapolis. Due to this substantial out-migration only 7 North Dakota counties, or less than one in seven, had population increases in the past decade. What perhaps worries me even more is the fact that our farm youth population has declined by 50% in both of the last two decades. In other words, out-migration is pummeling our State's well-being and threatening our economic future. I would say to my colleagues that the root of the North Dakota's problem is two-fold. One, we need to diversify our agricultural base so that family farmers can make a more dependable living. This requires access to water for the growth and processing of specialty crops to replace or augment the usual grains that North Dakota farmers have grown for decades. Second, we must provide reliable supplies of clean, affordable water needed for economic growth in towns and cities across North Dakota. Too many of them now lack dependable water supplies for municipal and industrial growth. What we need, then, is water development. And we thought we would get it! Over fifty years ago, the Federal Government began building a series of main stem dams on the Missouri River to provide flood protection, dependable river navigation and inexpensive hydropower--primarily for the benefit of states in the Lower Missouri Basin. The problem became acute when flooding during World War II disrupted the transport of war supplies and spawned disaster relief needs in a budget already over- stretched. When North Dakota allowed the Garrison Dam and Reservoir to be built in the State (and the consequences of the Oahe Reservoir in South Dakota are added in), it agreed to host permanent floods that inundated 500,000 acres of prime farm land and the Indian communities on two reservations. The State and Tribes did so in exchange for a promise that the Federal Government would replace the loss of these economic and social assets with a major water development project, the Garrison Diversion Unit. But 50 years later, the project is less than half done. I would like to explain for the benefit of my colleagues just how this bill relates to the Federal commitment to my State, what progress has been made on that commitment, what remains to be done, and how this bill will complete the project in a prudent way. May I remind my colleagues that the State lost a half million acres of prime farm land, a major component of its overall economic base. To grasp the size of this negative impact, I ask my colleagues to think of flooding a chunk of farm land the size of Rhode Island. As a result, North Dakota has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in farm income. Think, too, of Indian Tribes that lost their traditional homelands, their economic and social base, hospitals and roads, and a healthy lifestyle. Their lives were disrupted and their culture was turned upside down. We were promised, in exchange, a major water and irrigation project. It was designed to help meet the agricultural needs of a semi-arid state that gets only 15-17 inches of rainfall per year. We originally expected the resources to irrigate over a million acres of land, most of it in areas less productive than the land lost to the Garrison Reservoir. The Federal Government eventually started a scaled-down version of the project, with 250,000 acres of irrigation. In response to criticisms that the project was too costly and too environmentally disruptive, a federal commission proposed a major revision in 1984 and made recommendations on how to meet the State's contemporary water needs. But make no mistake, the promise remained. The Garrison Diversion Unit Commission stated: 1. The State of North Dakota deserves a federally-funded water project, at least some of which should be in the form of irrigation development, for land lost through inundation by reservoirs of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program. 2. The Commission agrees with Congress that a moral commitment was made in 1944 to the Upper Basin States and Indian Tribes with the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1944. The language of the statute establishing this commission reinforces this view. The State of North Dakota sacrificed hundreds of thousands of acres, much of it prime river bottomland, for the greater benefit of the nation. In return, the Federal Government promised assistance in replacement of the economic base of the State and Indian Tribes. There is evidence this has not taken place. In 1986, I renegotiated the project with the Reagan Administration, the House Interior Committee, and national environmental groups and these talks resulted in the Garrison Diversion Reformulation Act of 1986. The law implemented the Garrison Commission findings and recommendations and included a 130,000 acre irrigation project for the State and tribes, the promise of Missouri River water to augment water supplies in the Red River Valley, an installment on municipal, industrial, and rural (MR&I) water for communities across the State, the initial water systems for the Standing Rock, Fort Berthold, and Ft. Totten Indian reservations and a range of activities to mitigate and enhance wildlife and habitat. So you may ask, ``What progress has been made on the project?'' Although the promise of irrigation remains largely unfulfilled--with the exception of the Oakes Test Area--we have made substantial progress in laying the groundwork for water delivery and the provision of a partial network for MR&I supplies across the state. Over one-third of North Dakotans now benefit from 25 MRI programs on four Indian reservations and in some 80 communities. The Southwest Pipeline constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation has begun to solve water problems in the region where I grew up. For example, in my hometown of Regent the ranching family of Michelle McCormack used to struggle with coffee-colored water that stained their fixtures and clogged their distiller with sludge. Their well barely provided enough water for a family of six, let alone a herd of cattle. Because of the Garrison Project, the McCormacks can now enjoy ample supplies of quality, clean water--something most of us take for granted. And they can make a better living to boot. We have also taken great strides to mitigate wildlife areas impacted by the development of the McClusky and New Rockford Canals. We now have mitigated over 200% of the required lands, developed a Wetlands Trust Fund and programs, and begun to manage the former Lonetree Dam and Reservoir as a state wildlife conservation area. Incidentally, our new legislation would complete the process by de-authorizing the Lonetree features and converting them into a wildlife conservation area. For a variety of reasons, though, we have not fully realized the promise of the 1986 Act. Despite some strides, we have yet to develop a major irrigation unit under the Garrison Diversion project. We have only been able to develop a pilot research plot near Oakes, which has validated the use of irrigation for growing high value crops in North Dakota. Under terms of the 1986 Act, we would have 130,000 acres of irrigation, which will be scaled back to 70,000 acres in the bill we introduce today. This will reduce project costs and target limited funds in the bill on high priority irrigation and MR&I water development. We have completed Phase 1 of Municipal, Rural and Industrial development for three Indian tribes. There remains well over $200 million in needs to complete projects on all four reservations which will meet the charge of the Garrison Reformulation Act for the Secretary of the Interior ``to meet the economic, public health, and environmental needs'' of North Dakota tribes. From hearings I have held on the reservations, I can tell you that tribal members have some the worst water problems in the nation and we must fulfill the 1986 mandate. Our new legislation will provide $200 million to meet the critical water needs of North Dakota's four Indian nations. We have developed major elements of a water delivery system for the Red River Valley. But the Bureau of Reclamation is currently reviewing that issue with the State of North Dakota to determine the best way to meet the needs of Fargo, Grand Forks, and other communities throughout the Red River Valley. Let me illustrate the severity of the problem for the valley by noting that in many years in this century, the Red River either has slowed to a trickle or stopped running altogether. Imagine a major city that depends on a river for its municipal and industrial water supply and that river stops running. That is why our bill provides $200 million to meet the critical water needs the most populous part of our state. But let me add that this money will be fully repaid by water users. Finally, we have dozens of communities awaiting the promise of reliable supplies of clean and usable water. In several hearings I have held up bottles of coffee-like water from the McCormack ranch and several others, which have not yet been served by such projects as the Southwest Pipeline or the Northwest Area Water System. Patsy Storhoff's family, for one, has to haul and store water for their household use. At times, they make 1,400 gallons last up to three weeks--what most families tap in just five days. She sometimes tells her kids they have to postpone a bath in order to conserve scarce water because the neighbor who hauls their water won't get to Nome for a couple more days. Although when you pause to think about it, taking a bath in coffee-like water is a liquid oxymoron. In part because the State would forego 60,000 acres of irrigation in this bill and because we have realized only half of the Garrison Commission's promise of MR&I water for nearly 400,000 North Dakotans, we do provide $300 million for MR&I development across the state. That amount, plus the existing $200 million in authority for MR&I, will roughly match the amount promised by the Commission and the 1986 Act. So the Dakota Water Resources Act provides $700 million in new authority for water development, of which $200 million is fully repayable. In order to complete this project, however, North Dakota has had to make some major changes. In November of 1997, the delegation introduced the Dakota Water Resources Act as a bill that reflected a consensus of the bi-partisan elected leadership of the state, major cities, four tribal governments, water users, conservation groups, the State Water Coalition, and the Garrison Conservancy District. In a word, the bill scaled back irrigation from 130,000 to 70,000 acres, provided new resources to complete the major MR&I delivery systems for the four Indian tribes and the state's water supply network, and provided a process for choosing the best way to address Red River Valley water needs. It also made wildlife conservation a project purpose, expanded the Wetlands Trust into a more robust Natural Resources Trust, funded a critical bridge on the Ft. Berthold Reservation and a few priority recreation projects. Subsequently, the Bureau of Reclamation raised several questions and concerns about the bill which we have addressed in a series of negotiations and discussions over the past months. The revisions mainly address reducing costs, meeting tough environmental standards, strengthening compliance with an international border agreement, and reaffirming the role of the Secretary of the Interior in decision- making. The bi-partisan elected leaders embraced those changes and have agreed to re-introduce the Dakota Water Resources Act with the same language as the substitute amendment (No. 3112) which I offered with Senator Conrad last year. Mr. President, permit me to outline the specific provisions in the new version of the bill: 1. Retain the cost share of 25% for MR&I projects, along with a credit for cost share contributions exceeding that amount. This, in place of a 15% cost share. 2. Reimburse the federal government for the share of the capacity of the main stem delivery features which are used by the state. This, instead of writing off these features. 3. Index MR&I and Red River features only from the date of enactment, not since 1986. 4. Expressly bar any irrigation in the Hudson's Bay Basin. 5. Give the Secretary of the Interior the authority to select the Red River Valley Water Supply feature and to determine the feasibility of any newly authorized irrigation areas in the scaled-back package. 6. Extend the Environmental Impact Studies period and firm up Boundary Waters Treaty measures. Taken together with prior provisions, these changes achieve four purposes. First, they reduce costs by limiting indexing; by defining specific State responsibility for repayment of existing features instead of blanket debt forgiveness; by de-authorizing such major irrigation features as the Lonetree Dam and Reservoir, James River Feeder Canal and Sykeston Canal; and by retaining current law with respect to MR&I cost-sharing and repayment for Red River supply features. Second, the changes affirm the decision making authority of the Secretary of the Interior on key issues. The Secretary consults with the State of North Dakota on the plan to meet the water needs of the Red River Valley but he makes the final selection of the plan that works best. The Secretary also negotiates cooperative agreements with the State on other aspects of the project. These arrangements protect the Federal interest while assuring that North Dakota is a partner in a project so closely linked to its destiny. Third, the bill forthrightly addresses concerns of Canada. The U.S. and Canada have a mutual responsibility to abide by the Boundary Waters Treaty and other environmental conventions. The Dakota Water Resources Act states in the purpose that the United States must comply strictly with the Treaty. It further bars any irrigation in the Hudson's Bay drainage with water diverted from the Missouri River, thus limiting biota transfer between basins. Again, the Secretary of Interior chooses the Red River Valley water supply plan, but if that choice entails diversion of Missouri River water, then it must be fully treated with state-of-the-art purification and screening to prevent biota transfer. And as noted before, the bill de-authorizes the Lonetree features to which Canada previously had objected. Fourth, the revised bill strengthens environmental protection and does so by incorporating the specific recommendations of North Dakota wildlife and conservation groups. It lengthens the periods for completing Environmental Impact Statements. It also protects the Sheyenne Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Moreover, it preserves the role of the Secretary of the Interior on compliance matters and drops the provision that called for a study of bank stabilization on the Missouri River. In other words, these measures improve even more the proposals in the 1985 Garrison Commission Report on how to meet North Dakota's contemporary water needs. This sounds reasonable, but how does it stack up against the fiscal and environmental challenges of 1999? Irrespective of the Federal commitment to North Dakota, the State has not even received a proportional share of Bureau of Reclamation funds. Although my state includes six percent of the population in western states, it has received only two percent of Bureau funding. Next, most Bureau projects were awarded to augment water development and economic growth, not to compensate states for losses suffered from the construction of flood control projects by the Corps of Engineers. So just on the equities, North Dakota has a fair claim to complete Garrison project. The revised bill will also save the American taxpayer $500 million-- when compared to the cost of completing the current project. Moreover, of the $770 million in new authority in the revised bill, North Dakota will repay $345 million--almost half. There is no blanket debt retirement because North Dakota will pay for all facilities it uses. Moreover, this bill is not just about costs, though reduced and restrained, but about investments. The Dakota Water Resources Act underpins North Dakota's entire effort to stop the out-migration of its young people, the dwindling of family farms, and the decimation of rural communities. It is a charter for rural renewal and economic growth that will help family farms keep the yard lights burning and small towns keep their shop signs glowing. Finally, this bill is environmentally sound. It does not destroy wetlands, it preserves them. It preserves grasslands and riparian habitat, too. It was not dreamed up by a water development group. It was drafted with the input of tribal and community leaders, local and national environmental groups, the bipartisan leadership of the state, and the Bureau of Reclamation and Office of Management and Budget. It reflects a balanced approach to water resource development that applies the principles of conservation while offering the hope of economic development. Ultimately, this bill practices the policy of being a good neighbor that is the hallmark of our state. The Government of Canada approved the 1986 Garrison Act. This bill provides even more protection for Canadian interests. So while we can't appease the political agendas of certain folks in Canada, we can sure keep faith with the Boundary Waters Treaty. And we do. In conclusion, the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999 will guarantee that this project meets the tests of fiscal responsibility, environmental protection, and treaty compliance. It will do so while also addressing the critical water development needs of North Dakota and fulfilling the Federal obligation for water development for the communities and tribes of our State. Accordingly, I urge that my colleagues support the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is a piece of a backfire bomber. I suppose that some years ago, you would have thought the only way a Member of the U.S. Senate could hold a piece of a Soviet bomber or a Russian bomber in his hands would be if it were shot down somewhere in hostile action. This is a wing strut from a bomber that used to carry nuclear weapons that threatened this country. This bomber, as you can see, no longer flies. This wing strut is a result of a cut from the wing of that bomber that rendered that bomber useless. How did that happen? How does it happen that we are able to cut the wings off Russian bombers, and we are able to destroy Russian missile silos? Last year I held in my hand on the floor a metal flange from a missile silo in the Ukraine that used to sit on the prairies there in the Ukraine with a nuclear warhead aimed at the United States of America, and that piece of metal now doesn't come from a missile silo. I held it in my hand. The missile silo is gone. The missile is gone. The warhead is gone. Where a missile once sat aimed at the United States, there now is planted a field of sunflowers, sunflowers rather than missiles. How did it happen that in the Ukraine an intercontinental ballistic missile site was dug up, the missile gone, the warhead gone, and there are now sunflowers? How does it happen that a Soviet bomber has its wings sawed off? I tell you how it happens --Nunn-Lugar. Senators Dick Lugar and Sam Nunn offered a program here in the U.S. Senate trailing the arms control agreements we have had with the old Soviet Union and now Russia. It says the United States will help pay for the destruction of your weapons. Doesn't it make good sense for us to destroy Russian bombers, not with our bullets but with saws? Doesn't it make good sense for us to destroy Russian missiles in their silo through the use of American taxpayer funds, not with people who have to go in the field and fight and risk their lives, but through a treaty of arms control in which we help pay the cost of the destruction of nuclear weapons and delivery systems controlled by Russia and the old Soviet Union? Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia, the Ukraine and others have destroyed over 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, 400. In the last several weeks, I saw a nuclear weapon. I was in a weapons storage facility on a tour, and I won't describe it in great detail, probably because I couldn't. A nuclear weapon is not very big. A nuclear bomb is not large at all. You can have a nuclear bomb dozens of times the power of the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. It is no bigger than that desk. The Soviet Union, Russia and the Ukraine, now named, have destroyed over 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles with MIRV warheads, over 400 of them gone. Our arms control agreement has rendered them gone. They are gone. We helped pay for it. We cut the wings off the planes. We pulled the missiles out of the ground. We saw those missiles destroyed. We have cut the wings off 37 Soviet bombers. Eighty submarine missile launch tubes are now gone; 95 nuclear warhead test tunnels are now sealed. That is major progress. If the Russians ratify START II, which I think they are likely to do, we will see further dramatic reductions in the number of bombers and missiles and warheads on both sides. That will happen not because we are fighting but because we are cooperating, not because there are tensions but because there is an arms control regime we are following and because we are helping them destroy their weapons at the same time we are reducing our weapons. We want to deactivate over 5,000 warheads, destroy 200 missile silos, 40,000 chemical weapons. Look at the success. Eliminate 500 metric tons of highly enriched uranium. Would we or should we do anything to jeopardize this progress? What might jeopardize it? We have a treaty with the Russians, and the treaty is an ABM Treaty. The proposal by some is to say ignore the treaty; it doesn't matter. These treaties are not very important. These treaties START I, START II, ABM, hopefully a START III, these treaties allow us to make this progress and reduce the nuclear threat and reduce the threat of nuclear war. Thirty-two thousand nuclear weapons remain in the United States and Russian arsenals today. Some of those are theater weapons; thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons, of course. That is half the number of a decade ago, but does that give us great confidence? No. We need to reduce them much, much further. How can we do that? I know how we won't do that. All of that progress in the reduction of nuclear weapons could come to an abrupt halt if we deploy a national missile defense system without any regard to the concerns raised about whether this legislation would violate the ABM Treaty that we have made with the Russians in order to slow the nuclear arms race. Instead of working cooperatively with other nuclear powers, if we act unilaterally we surely risk a return to a costly and dangerous arms race with Russia and China as well. A former colleague, Dale Bumpers, said something interesting about this. He said: We can ignore Russia's concerns now, but in the years to come, she will slowly recover and resume a great power role in the world. By rash actions such as abrogation of the ABM Treaty, we are far more likely to rekindle the cold war with a hostile nation than to produce a constructive relationship with a cooperative Russia. Senator Bumpers, then, was wisely cautioning us that the calculations that go into our strategic defense decisions today will have enormous consequences and costly consequences for the world that we pass on to our children. Each day we move closer to eliminating the nuclear threat left over from the cold war, thanks to arms reductions mandated in START I and START II and thanks to the Nunn-Lugar threat reduction that has been so successful. As I indicated, that investment has been a critically important investment in reducing the nuclear threat. I show my colleagues a chart that talks about the imbalance between money that some propose we spend on a national missile defense program versus money we spend on arms reduction. This chart shows what we are prepared to spend on a national missile defense system, a limited one, one that won't protect us against much of the threat, but compare it even at that to what is planned to be spent on arms reduction. I hope this is not a picture of our priorities. I wish it were reversed. This legislation that we are considering says just do it, in the popular jargon of today. Deploy the system as soon as the military can get it up there. Cost doesn't matter. Arms control doesn't matter. Nothing much matters. Deploy it as soon as is possible. We are nervous. Mr. President, let me say that I support the strongest possible defense against any threat to our country, but if you rationally think through the range of threats to our country, you must start with the understanding that the largest possible threat to our country comes from thousands of nuclear warheads that now exist, thousands of nuclear warheads already in stockpiles with delivery vehicles, bombers and ICBMs and others. We must continue the work of reducing them, and we have done that very successfully. Anything we do here to jeopardize that would be a profound mistake. In addition to that, what are the other threats? A rogue nation getting an ICBM? Yes, that is a small threat way over here on the edge. How about a rogue nation getting a rental truck, as I said, with a nuclear device planted in the back somewhere? Probably more likely. Or a deadly vile of the most deadly biological agent? More likely. A suitcase nuclear bomb? More likely. Should we worry about all of these? Should we prepare for all of these? Of course. We would be foolhardy as a nation to underestimate the threat of terrorism and underestimate the intentions of rogue nations. We would be fools to do that. But it would be shortsighted for us to decide, because we are concerned about all of that, we are willing to push all of our chips to the middle of the table and say we will risk the very substantial achievements we have made in arms control reductions. The elimination of Russian bombers by cutting off their wings, the destruction of Russian missiles, the dismantling of Russian warheads, making Ukraine nuclear free--did anyone think they would hear that? We risk all of that if we move in a manner in the Senate that says, ``You don't matter; all that matters is our short-term nervousness about one small slice of one of the threats that exist.'' That is not a balanced approach. Mr. President, I conclude by saying I think one of the more talented Senators in this country is the Senator from Mississippi, Senator Cochran. I enjoy working with him. I think he is bright and productive, and he is one of the people that makes me proud to be a Senator. The same is true of my colleague from Michigan, Senator Levin. The fact is, they have pretty big disagreements about some of these issues, but this is a very big issue. This idea about how this country responds to nuclear threats and what kind of nuclear threat should persuade us to respond in certain ways will have profound implications for all of us and for our children and our grandchildren. I have a young son age 11 and a daughter age 9 who are in school today, at least I hope they are in school today. They are the most wonderful children any father would ever hope to have. I hope when my service is done in the U.S. Senate, whatever I might contribute to public policy, that they might say I helped in a way to reduce the nuclear threat, I helped in a significant way to have this world move away from the kind of nuclear threat that has existed now for many, many decades. It is hard for people to believe because it does not get much press and it is not very sexy, but every day we are spending American taxpayer dollars to destroy missiles that used to be aimed at American cities. What a remarkable thing to have happen. What a remarkable success. I think it was Mark Twain who said once that bad news travels halfway around the world before good news gets its shoes on. That certainly has to be true with respect to this nuclear issue, the nuclear threat. How much attention does this get, the day-to-day success we have in reducing nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles? Let us not jeopardize that. Let us move forward together in a thoughtful way, understanding, yes, we should prepare for some kind of missile defense. Let's do it thoughtfully, let's do it when it is technologically possible, but let's make sure we do it when it is cost effective, technologically possible, will not interrupt and will not pose danger to our arms control agreements. Let us condition it on all of those issues together and, as a country, then do the right thing. Again, I thank the Senator from Michigan, Senator Levin, for allowing me to have some time in this debate. I hope in the coming hours we will be able to address this just a bit further. Let me conclude--I know the Senator from Tennessee is waiting--let me conclude with one final statement. The majority leader said this morning that we should be clear in our intentions toward the ABM Treaty. I do not know what that means. I encourage him to tell me what that means. I agree with it, we should be clear, and I hope we are clear with respect to our intentions about the ABM Treaty to say that treaty matters, that treaty means something, and to the extent we seek changes in that treaty, we will, with the Russians, negotiate those changes, but we will not take an attitude that this treaty does not matter to this country. Let us hope that is what the majority leader meant when he said, let's be clear about our intentions toward the ABM Treaty. I yield the floor. Mr. THOMPSON addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator from Arkansas. I think there are far more questions than answers on the issues he raised. I think the issues of national security dealing with China are serious. The alleged spying, as I understand it, occurred in the mid-1980s; the transfer of missile technology and agreements for that transfer occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. The Senator raises very important security questions and we need answers to those questions. I am sure in the coming days we will learn more about many of these issues as we discuss them with the appropriate people who have been a part of this matter for, now, a decade or a decade and a half. But I came to the floor and have waited here to speak about the national missile defense proposal. That is what is on the floor at the moment, national missile defense. Mr. President, 24 years ago our country built an antiballistic missile system in my home State. It is the only ABM, or antiballistic missile, system anywhere in the free world. That ABM--or what we would now call national missile defense-- system, that ABM program, cost over $20 billion in today's dollars. On October 1, 1975, the antiballistic missile system was declared operational. On October 2, 1 day later, Congress voted to mothball it. We spent a great deal of money. I encourage those who are interested in seeing what that money purchased to get on an airplane and fly over that sparsely populated northeastern portion of North Dakota. You will see a concrete monument to the ABM system. It was abandoned a day after it was declared operational. Did that system make us safer? Did taking the taxpayers' dollars and building that ABM system improve national security in this country? The judgment was it was not worth the money after all. Yet here we are, nearly a quarter of a century later, debating a bill that would require the deployment of a national missile defense system, another ballistic missile defense system, as soon as technologically feasible. It was technologically feasible 24 years ago. It was a different technology. The technology then was, if you see a Russian missile--or a Soviet missile then--coming in to attack this country, you send up some antiballistic missile defenses, and they have nuclear warheads, and you blow off a nuclear warhead somewhere up there in the heavens and it obliterates the incoming missiles. That was the technology then. It was technologically possible then. Now the new technology is, we are not going to send a nuclear missile up to wipe out some incoming nuclear missile--or a missile with a nuclear warhead, I should say. What we will do is, we will hit a speeding bullet with another speeding bullet. If someone puts a missile up with a nuclear warhead, we send a missile up with our charge and we hit it--a bullet hitting a bullet. Of course, all the tests now demonstrate that is very hard to do. There have been far more test failures than successes in this technology. But here we are saying, let us deploy a National Missile Defense System as soon as technologically feasible. It is technologically feasible for my 11-year-old son to drive my car. I wouldn't suggest that someone who meets him on the road would consider it very safe or appropriate for Brendon to be driving my automobile, but it is technologically feasible. So what does that mean, technologically feasible? What does it mean with respect to missile defense? Will it make us safer? Here is what we do know. A national missile defense system cannot protect us from a low-flying cruise missile launched by a Third World despot who can much more easily access a cruise missile than an intercontinental ballistic missile and put it on a barge somewhere off a coast and lob in a nuclear-tipped cruise missile. Will we, when we deploy this system, defend against that? No, not at all. That is not what this system is for. It is to defend against an ICBM. And not just any ICBM--not a Russian ICBM, for example, because any kind of robust launch of more than a handful of missiles cannot be defended with this new technology, the kind of technological catcher's mitt that we send up to catch an incoming missile. It is only a missile from a rogue nation. If a rogue nation acquires an intercontinental ballistic missile--unlikely perhaps, but let's assume a rogue nation acquires an intercontinental ballistic missile and uses that with a nuclear warhead attached to its top to threaten this country. What are the likely threats? Among the threats, the least likely would be a rogue nation using an intercontinental ballistic missile. More likely would be their access to a cruise missile, to purchase a cruise missile someplace. Of course this system will not defend against that. More likely than that is, perhaps, a rental truck filled with a nuclear explosive or perhaps a suitcase nuclear bomb planted in the trunk of an old Yugo car parked at a New York dock--a far more likely threat by a rogue nation than access to an intercontinental ballistic missile. Will this protect us against those threats? No. National missile defense shields us against one threat only--the accidental launch of a ballistic missile from an existing nuclear power or the future possibility of an attack by a rogue nation. But it is not just any accidental launch. It would be an accidental launch of just one or two or a few missiles, because any launch beyond that, of course, would be a launch that would prevail over a limited national missile defense system. If we deploy a national missile defense system before it is ready-- not just technologically possible, but tested and ready --then what are we getting for our money? What does the taxpayer get for the requirement to deploy a new weapons program, albeit defensive, before it is ready to be deployed? Detecting, tracking, discriminating, and hitting a trashcan-sized target traveling 20 times the speed of sound, landing in 20 or 30 minutes anywhere in the world after it is launched--intercepting that with another bullet that we send up into the skies? To put it mildly, that is problematic. Our efforts to date, under highly controlled test environments, come nowhere close to meeting the requirements a ballistic missile system would need to satisfy and justify deployment. If we deploy without regard to all of the other issues and all of the other considerations, all of the efforts we have made to reduce weapons of mass destruction that pose such a danger to the world, will we make this a safer world? Or a world that is more dangerous? If we deploy this system before we have renegotiated with Russia the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, we are sure to jeopardize the enormous gains we have already made in arms reduction efforts. I would like to show a picture just for a moment. I also ask unanimous consent to show a piece of an airplane on the floor of the Senate.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am happy to join my colleague, Senator Conrad, on the introduction of the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999. We have previously introduced similar legislation. We worked on this legislation with the Governor of North Dakota, as well as the bi-partisan leadership in the State legislature in North Dakota, Tribal leaders, and many others. Republicans and Democrats together developed a piece of legislation that we think is not only good for our State and important for the State's long-term future, but which also completes the promise that was given our State many, many years ago. I will not talk about the specific provisions of the bill in a way that will duplicate information which has already been provided, but let me again describe the story, just for a moment. People say, Water projects--this is some kind of proposal to enrich your region of the country. Well, there is more to the story. In the 1940s, we had a wild Missouri River that would periodically flood in a very significant way, and in the downstream reaches of the river, Kansas City, MO, and elsewhere, areas would have massive spring flooding. The Federal Government said, Let's put some main stem dams on the Missouri River in order to control that flooding. As we put these dams on that river, we will also be able to generate electricity from those dams, so we will prevent flooding and provide electrical benefits. It will be a wonderful opportunity. North Dakota, your deal in this is to accept a flood that comes and stays every year. You take a half-million-acre flood that comes to your State and stays there forever. If you are willing to play host to a flood forever, we will make you a deal. We know it is not in your interest to say, please, bring us a permanent flood, so if you do that, we will make you a deal. Accept a flood--the size of the State of Rhode Island, by the way--and when that flood comes, you can take the water from behind the reservoir and move it around your State for water development and quality purposes. That was the original Garrison proposal. Now, that promise, that commitment has not been kept. The flood came; that part of the bargain has been kept. But we have not received the full flower of benefits that we would expect as a result of the Federal commitment. For that reason, we continue to insist that if your word is your bond and the Federal Government said take this flood and we will provide these benefits for your State, and we need these benefits for our State to be able to move good quality water around our State, for that reason we feel compelled to say to the Federal Government, finish the job. That is what this legislation is about. It is not, as some environmental organizations insist, some new billion-dollar project. It is not that at all. In fact, what we are doing will, in a minor way, reduce the authorized project that already exists as a result of the 1965 authorization and the 1986 authorization. This bill makes the final adjustments to this project. I have a series of charts which I will not go through, recognizing that the folks who are in charge of the timing of this institution want to go to lunch. Let me come back at a more appropriate time and go through all of my charts in great detail for the benefit of everyone. I will only say in closing that my colleague and I feel that this is a very important project and a bipartisan piece of legislation that will be good for this country, allow our country to keep its promise and will especially be a good investment for North Dakota. My prepared remarks on the Dakota Water Resources Act will explain these points in greater detail. Mr. President, the new bill has been substantially modified in the form of a substitute amendment (No. 3112) which we introduced on July 9, 1998. This revised bill represents a bi-partisan consensus carefully negotiated by the major elected officials in our State. It's a water development bill that I am proud to sponsor. It reduces Federal costs, meets environmental and international obligations, and fulfills the Federal promise to address North Dakota's contemporary water needs. This is still among the most important pieces of legislation I will introduce for my State. I emphasize once more that this is because the key to North Dakota's economic development is water resource management and development. And the key to water development in my State has come to be the Garrison Diversion Project in the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999. I want to share with my colleagues in greater detail the frustrating story of an unfulfilled promise to build a water project because some have questioned the rationale for the project. I want to explain why the people of North Dakota need and expect to have this promise fulfilled in the form of the Dakota Water Resources Act. Over 100 years ago, John Wesley Powell of the U.S. Geological Survey predicted to the North Dakota Constitutional Convention that the lean years in agriculture would cause ``thousands of people . . . (to) become discouraged and leave.'' He was referring to the difficulty of making a living on farms and ranches in a state with abundant water but limited rainfall. Unfortunately, Powell's prediction is as telling today as it was in the last century. Thousands of North Dakotans are leaving the State for economic opportunities in cities such as Denver and Minneapolis. Due to this substantial out-migration only 7 North Dakota counties, or less than one in seven, had population increases in the past decade. What perhaps worries me even more is the fact that our farm youth population has declined by 50% in both of the last two decades. In other words, out-migration is pummeling our State's well-being and threatening our economic future. I would say to my colleagues that the root of the North Dakota's problem is two-fold. One, we need to diversify our agricultural base so that family farmers can make a more dependable living. This requires access to water for the growth and processing of specialty crops to replace or augment the usual grains that North Dakota farmers have grown for decades. Second, we must provide reliable supplies of clean, affordable water needed for economic growth in towns and cities across North Dakota. Too many of them now lack dependable water supplies for municipal and industrial growth. What we need, then, is water development. And we thought we would get it! Over fifty years ago, the Federal Government began building a series of main stem dams on the Missouri River to provide flood protection, dependable river navigation and inexpensive hydropower--primarily for the benefit of states in the Lower Missouri Basin. The problem became acute when flooding during World War II disrupted the transport of war supplies and spawned disaster relief needs in a budget already over- stretched. When North Dakota allowed the Garrison Dam and Reservoir to be built in the State (and the consequences of the Oahe Reservoir in South Dakota are added in), it agreed to host permanent floods that inundated 500,000 acres of prime farm land and the Indian communities on two reservations. The State and Tribes did so in exchange for a promise that the Federal Government would replace the loss of these economic and social assets with a major water development project, the Garrison Diversion Unit. But 50 years later, the project is less than half done. I would like to explain for the benefit of my colleagues just how this bill relates to the Federal commitment to my State, what progress has been made on that commitment, what remains to be done, and how this bill will complete the project in a prudent way. May I remind my colleagues that the State lost a half million acres of prime farm land, a major component of its overall economic base. To grasp the size of this negative impact, I ask my colleagues to think of flooding a chunk of farm land the size of Rhode Island. As a result, North Dakota has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in farm income. Think, too, of Indian Tribes that lost their traditional homelands, their economic and social base, hospitals and roads, and a healthy lifestyle. Their lives were disrupted and their culture was turned upside down. We were promised, in exchange, a major water and irrigation project. It was designed to help meet the agricultural needs of a semi-arid state that gets only 15-17 inches of rainfall per year. We originally expected the resources to irrigate over a million acres of land, most of it in areas less productive than the land lost to the Garrison Reservoir. The Federal Government eventually started a scaled-down version of the project, with 250,000 acres of irrigation. In response to criticisms that the project was too costly and too environmentally disruptive, a federal commission proposed a major revision in 1984 and made recommendations on how to meet the State's contemporary water needs. But make no mistake, the promise remained. The Garrison Diversion Unit Commission stated: 1. The State of North Dakota deserves a federally-funded water project, at least some of which should be in the form of irrigation development, for land lost through inundation by reservoirs of the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program. 2. The Commission agrees with Congress that a moral commitment was made in 1944 to the Upper Basin States and Indian Tribes with the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1944. The language of the statute establishing this commission reinforces this view. The State of North Dakota sacrificed hundreds of thousands of acres, much of it prime river bottomland, for the greater benefit of the nation. In return, the Federal Government promised assistance in replacement of the economic base of the State and Indian Tribes. There is evidence this has not taken place. In 1986, I renegotiated the project with the Reagan Administration, the House Interior Committee, and national environmental groups and these talks resulted in the Garrison Diversion Reformulation Act of 1986. The law implemented the Garrison Commission findings and recommendations and included a 130,000 acre irrigation project for the State and tribes, the promise of Missouri River water to augment water supplies in the Red River Valley, an installment on municipal, industrial, and rural (MR&I) water for communities across the State, the initial water systems for the Standing Rock, Fort Berthold, and Ft. Totten Indian reservations and a range of activities to mitigate and enhance wildlife and habitat. So you may ask, ``What progress has been made on the project?'' Although the promise of irrigation remains largely unfulfilled--with the exception of the Oakes Test Area--we have made substantial progress in laying the groundwork for water delivery and the provision of a partial network for MR&I supplies across the state. Over one-third of North Dakotans now benefit from 25 MRI programs on four Indian reservations and in some 80 communities. The Southwest Pipeline constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation has begun to solve water problems in the region where I grew up. For example, in my hometown of Regent the ranching family of Michelle McCormack used to struggle with coffee-colored water that stained their fixtures and clogged their distiller with sludge. Their well barely provided enough water for a family of six, let alone a herd of cattle. Because of the Garrison Project, the McCormacks can now enjoy ample supplies of quality, clean water--something most of us take for granted. And they can make a better living to boot. We have also taken great strides to mitigate wildlife areas impacted by the development of the McClusky and New Rockford Canals. We now have mitigated over 200% of the required lands, developed a Wetlands Trust Fund and programs, and begun to manage the former Lonetree Dam and Reservoir as a state wildlife conservation area. Incidentally, our new legislation would complete the process by de-authorizing the Lonetree features and converting them into a wildlife conservation area. For a variety of reasons, though, we have not fully realized the promise of the 1986 Act. Despite some strides, we have yet to develop a major irrigation unit under the Garrison Diversion project. We have only been able to develop a pilot research plot near Oakes, which has validated the use of irrigation for growing high value crops in North Dakota. Under terms of the 1986 Act, we would have 130,000 acres of irrigation, which will be scaled back to 70,000 acres in the bill we introduce today. This will reduce project costs and target limited funds in the bill on high priority irrigation and MR&I water development. We have completed Phase 1 of Municipal, Rural and Industrial development for three Indian tribes. There remains well over $200 million in needs to complete projects on all four reservations which will meet the charge of the Garrison Reformulation Act for the Secretary of the Interior ``to meet the economic, public health, and environmental needs'' of North Dakota tribes. From hearings I have held on the reservations, I can tell you that tribal members have some the worst water problems in the nation and we must fulfill the 1986 mandate. Our new legislation will provide $200 million to meet the critical water needs of North Dakota's four Indian nations. We have developed major elements of a water delivery system for the Red River Valley. But the Bureau of Reclamation is currently reviewing that issue with the State of North Dakota to determine the best way to meet the needs of Fargo, Grand Forks, and other communities throughout the Red River Valley. Let me illustrate the severity of the problem for the valley by noting that in many years in this century, the Red River either has slowed to a trickle or stopped running altogether. Imagine a major city that depends on a river for its municipal and industrial water supply and that river stops running. That is why our bill provides $200 million to meet the critical water needs the most populous part of our state. But let me add that this money will be fully repaid by water users. Finally, we have dozens of communities awaiting the promise of reliable supplies of clean and usable water. In several hearings I have held up bottles of coffee-like water from the McCormack ranch and several others, which have not yet been served by such projects as the Southwest Pipeline or the Northwest Area Water System. Patsy Storhoff's family, for one, has to haul and store water for their household use. At times, they make 1,400 gallons last up to three weeks--what most families tap in just five days. She sometimes tells her kids they have to postpone a bath in order to conserve scarce water because the neighbor who hauls their water won't get to Nome for a couple more days. Although when you pause to think about it, taking a bath in coffee-like water is a liquid oxymoron. In part because the State would forego 60,000 acres of irrigation in this bill and because we have realized only half of the Garrison Commission's promise of MR&I water for nearly 400,000 North Dakotans, we do provide $300 million for MR&I development across the state. That amount, plus the existing $200 million in authority for MR&I, will roughly match the amount promised by the Commission and the 1986 Act. So the Dakota Water Resources Act provides $700 million in new authority for water development, of which $200 million is fully repayable. In order to complete this project, however, North Dakota has had to make some major changes. In November of 1997, the delegation introduced the Dakota Water Resources Act as a bill that reflected a consensus of the bi-partisan elected leadership of the state, major cities, four tribal governments, water users, conservation groups, the State Water Coalition, and the Garrison Conservancy District. In a word, the bill scaled back irrigation from 130,000 to 70,000 acres, provided new resources to complete the major MR&I delivery systems for the four Indian tribes and the state's water supply network, and provided a process for choosing the best way to address Red River Valley water needs. It also made wildlife conservation a project purpose, expanded the Wetlands Trust into a more robust Natural Resources Trust, funded a critical bridge on the Ft. Berthold Reservation and a few priority recreation projects. Subsequently, the Bureau of Reclamation raised several questions and concerns about the bill which we have addressed in a series of negotiations and discussions over the past months. The revisions mainly address reducing costs, meeting tough environmental standards, strengthening compliance with an international border agreement, and reaffirming the role of the Secretary of the Interior in decision- making. The bi-partisan elected leaders embraced those changes and have agreed to re-introduce the Dakota Water Resources Act with the same language as the substitute amendment (No. 3112) which I offered with Senator Conrad last year. Mr. President, permit me to outline the specific provisions in the new version of the bill: 1. Retain the cost share of 25% for MR&I projects, along with a credit for cost share contributions exceeding that amount. This, in place of a 15% cost share. 2. Reimburse the federal government for the share of the capacity of the main stem delivery features which are used by the state. This, instead of writing off these features. 3. Index MR&I and Red River features only from the date of enactment, not since 1986. 4. Expressly bar any irrigation in the Hudson's Bay Basin. 5. Give the Secretary of the Interior the authority to select the Red River Valley Water Supply feature and to determine the feasibility of any newly authorized irrigation areas in the scaled-back package. 6. Extend the Environmental Impact Studies period and firm up Boundary Waters Treaty measures. Taken together with prior provisions, these changes achieve four purposes. First, they reduce costs by limiting indexing; by defining specific State responsibility for repayment of existing features instead of blanket debt forgiveness; by de-authorizing such major irrigation features as the Lonetree Dam and Reservoir, James River Feeder Canal and Sykeston Canal; and by retaining current law with respect to MR&I cost-sharing and repayment for Red River supply features. Second, the changes affirm the decision making authority of the Secretary of the Interior on key issues. The Secretary consults with the State of North Dakota on the plan to meet the water needs of the Red River Valley but he makes the final selection of the plan that works best. The Secretary also negotiates cooperative agreements with the State on other aspects of the project. These arrangements protect the Federal interest while assuring that North Dakota is a partner in a project so closely linked to its destiny. Third, the bill forthrightly addresses concerns of Canada. The U.S. and Canada have a mutual responsibility to abide by the Boundary Waters Treaty and other environmental conventions. The Dakota Water Resources Act states in the purpose that the United States must comply strictly with the Treaty. It further bars any irrigation in the Hudson's Bay drainage with water diverted from the Missouri River, thus limiting biota transfer between basins. Again, the Secretary of Interior chooses the Red River Valley water supply plan, but if that choice entails diversion of Missouri River water, then it must be fully treated with state-of-the-art purification and screening to prevent biota transfer. And as noted before, the bill de-authorizes the Lonetree features to which Canada previously had objected. Fourth, the revised bill strengthens environmental protection and does so by incorporating the specific recommendations of North Dakota wildlife and conservation groups. It lengthens the periods for completing Environmental Impact Statements. It also protects the Sheyenne Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Moreover, it preserves the role of the Secretary of the Interior on compliance matters and drops the provision that called for a study of bank stabilization on the Missouri River. In other words, these measures improve even more the proposals in the 1985 Garrison Commission Report on how to meet North Dakota's contemporary water needs. This sounds reasonable, but how does it stack up against the fiscal and environmental challenges of 1999? Irrespective of the Federal commitment to North Dakota, the State has not even received a proportional share of Bureau of Reclamation funds. Although my state includes six percent of the population in western states, it has received only two percent of Bureau funding. Next, most Bureau projects were awarded to augment water development and economic growth, not to compensate states for losses suffered from the construction of flood control projects by the Corps of Engineers. So just on the equities, North Dakota has a fair claim to complete Garrison project. The revised bill will also save the American taxpayer $500 million-- when compared to the cost of completing the current project. Moreover, of the $770 million in new authority in the revised bill, North Dakota will repay $345 million--almost half. There is no blanket debt retirement because North Dakota will pay for all facilities it uses. Moreover, this bill is not just about costs, though reduced and restrained, but about investments. The Dakota Water Resources Act underpins North Dakota's entire effort to stop the out-migration of its young people, the dwindling of family farms, and the decimation of rural communities. It is a charter for rural renewal and economic growth that will help family farms keep the yard lights burning and small towns keep their shop signs glowing. Finally, this bill is environmentally sound. It does not destroy wetlands, it preserves them. It preserves grasslands and riparian habitat, too. It was not dreamed up by a water development group. It was drafted with the input of tribal and community leaders, local and national environmental groups, the bipartisan leadership of the state, and the Bureau of Reclamation and Office of Management and Budget. It reflects a balanced approach to water resource development that applies the principles of conservation while offering the hope of economic development. Ultimately, this bill practices the policy of being a good neighbor that is the hallmark of our state. The Government of Canada approved the 1986 Garrison Act. This bill provides even more protection for Canadian interests. So while we can't appease the political agendas of certain folks in Canada, we can sure keep faith with the Boundary Waters Treaty. And we do. In conclusion, the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999 will guarantee that this project meets the tests of fiscal responsibility, environmental protection, and treaty compliance. It will do so while also addressing the critical water development needs of North Dakota and fulfilling the Federal obligation for water development for the communities and tribes of our State. Accordingly, I urge that my colleagues support the Dakota Water Resources Act of 1999.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am very pleased to join Senators Rockefeller, Burns, and Roberts today in introducing the ``Railroad Competition and Service improvement Act of 1999.'' This legislation is designed to stimulate railroad competition and level the field for shippers who need relief from unreasonable rates. Earlier this month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report on the barriers to rate relief that prevent small captive shippers from unreasonable rates. That report, outlined below, identified a number of remedies that would give captive shippers a fighting chance at rate relief. This legislation closely mirrors the GAO's findings and if enacted, would go a long way to improve rail service and promote competition. In my home state of North Dakota over fifty percent of the state economy is dependent upon agriculture. Our ability to move its agricultural production to distant markets affects large sectors of North Dakota's economy. Over eighty percent of all the grain shipped out-of-state moves by rail and 97 percent of North Dakota's grain elevators have access to only one railroad. Those who survive on farming and those who live in states like North Dakota whose main business is agriculture have a great deal at stake when it comes to rail transportation. Overcharges cost us millions of dollars a year, adding a substantial cost to a product that already operates at very low margins. Since virtually all of the shippers in North Dakota are subject to monopoly service, our farmers and county grain elevators are paying a premium for a service they cannot afford to live without. Rail service in this country is supposed to be competitive where the forces of competition determine shipping rates and in the absence of competition, the STB is suppose to have a process that will protect captive shippers from overcharges. Unfortunately, rail competition is more of an exception than the rule and the process that is designed to protect captive shippers is so costly and time-consuming that shippers are without recourse; left to the mercy of monopoly railroads who not only determine whether or not their product will get to market but also how much they will charge to deliver that product. This is a circumstance that must be addressed as the Congress considers the reauthorization of the STB this year. Prior to 1976, the ICC regulated almost all the rates that railroads charged shippers. The Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Act (1976) and the Staggers Rail Act (1980) limited the regulation of the rail industry by allowing the ICC to regulate rates only where railroads have no effective competition and established the ICC's process for resolving rate disputes. At the time when the Congress began the process of railroad deregulation (1976) there were 63 class I railroads in the United States. By 1997, through mergers and other factors, the number of class I railroads shrunk to nine. These nine carriers accounted for more than 90 percent of the industry's freight revenue and 71 percent of the industry's mileage operated in 1997. In July, 1998, the STB approved another Class I merger by splitting the assets of Conrail between CSX and Norfolk Southern (reducing the Class I count to 8 once implemented). Another merger between Canadian National Railway and Illinois Central is pending before the STB. This consolidation has diminished competition, creating an even greater dependence upon a rate relief process through a regulatory body such as the STB. Agricultural, utility, and chemical industries in particular rely heavily upon rail transportation and the cost of unreasonable rail rates has a dramatic impact on these important industries. According to GAO/RCED-99-46, ``Railroad Regulation: Current Issues Associated With the Rate Relief Process,'' February 1999, ``[t]he Surface Transportation Board's standard procedures for obtaining rate relief are highly complex and time-consuming'' and the GAO estimates that over ``70 percent [of shippers] believe that the time, complexity, and costs of filing complaints are barriers that often preclude them from seeking relief.'' The report documents that the process for a small captive shipper to obtain rate relief under the current regulatory and legal framework is broken and unworkable. The reasons for these barriers are multiple: (A) Historical regulatory precedence has created a complex web of hurdles an barriers building an insurmountable maze for a small shipper to seek rate relief; (B) contradictory statutorily directives based on a statute that was designed to protect the financial health of railroads while at the same time attempt to protect the needs of shippers to challenge unreasonable rates; and (C) the time and cost entailed in filing a rate complaint has reached absurd levels, far outweighing the potential savings that could be achieved through a successful challenge to an unreasonable rate. The STB rate complaint process involves an up front filing fee cost of $54,500 ($5,400 for the simplified guidelines)--plus the costs of pursuing the case through years of negotiation through a complex maze of discovery; evidentiary hearings; rebuttals; and administrative appeals. Seeking rate relief under the current process is very costly to shippers. The rate relief cases analyzed by the GAO cost shippers between $500,000 to $3 million each to file and wade through the process and took between a few months and 16 years to resolve. For example, the McCarty Farms case took over 16 years to resolve and ended up in Federal District Court. The GAO surveyed over 700 shippers and found that (a) 75 percent of the shippers believed that they are overcharged with unreasonable rates; and (b) over 70 percent of the shippers believed that the time, complexity, and costs of filing complaints create unsurmountable barriers and therefore preclude them from pursuing the rate relief they are entitled to under the law. (It is not surprising that the GAO found that the railroad monopolies unanimously support the current process and see no need for change.) The report reviewed all the rate relief filings pending before the STB (and its predecessor, the ICC) since 1990. The GAO found that only 41 rate relief filings were either pending or have been filed since 1990. About half of these complaints were settled outside of the STB's process and therefore dismissed. Of the remaining complaints, 7 were decided in favor of the railroad and only 2 have been decided in favor of the shipper; 9 are still pending; and 5 were dismissed without settlement. The GAO also found that, in 1997, only 18 percent of the total tonnage shipped via rail in this country is subject to rate regulation by the STB. About 70 percent of all shipments is exempt because it is shipped under contract and the STB has exempted another 12 percent. Thus, the GAO's analysis of barriers to shippers only relates to a portion of the total tonnage of rail shipments in the United States. The ICC Terminations Act required the STB to develop simplified procedures for rate complaint filings. While the STB has developed those simplified procedures, the railroad industry has already challenged them in court and not a single shipper has filed a complaint under these new procedures since the STB issued the simplified guidelines in December 1996. The GAO survey of shippers found that the vast majority of shippers (over 70%) believe that the STB rate relief process is too costly, complex, and time consuming. Shippers identified the following barriers to obtaining rate relief under the current process: The legal costs associated with filing complaints outweighs the benefits of winning relief. The rate complaint process is too complex and takes too long. Developing the stand alone revenue to variable cost model (shippers are required to calculate that the rate they are charged exceeds 180% of the revenue to variable cost of a hypothetical railroad to provide them service) is too costly. Most shippers believe that the STB is most likely to decide in favor of the railroad so the effort is not worth its costs. The discovery process is too difficult because the shipper is dependent upon the railroad for all the necessary data to calculate the revenue to variable cost ratio. Responding to the railroad requests for discovery is too difficult and time consuming (note: the GAO identified instances in its analysis of the 41 cases filed since 1990 that railroads often extended the complaint process through lengthy discovery requests). Fear of reprisal from the railroads. The STB filing fee in itself is too high to consider filing a rate complaint. The GAO report found that shippers desire to see (1) a more simplified rate complaint process and (2) increased competition in the railroad industry that would lower rates and diminish the need for a rate complaint process. According to the GAO report, the vast majority of shippers believe that the following changes in the rate relief process are necessary to provide them with the ability to seek the rate relief-- The STB's time limit for deciding a rate relief case should be shortened (the current limit is 16 months). The complaint fee required upon fining should be eliminated or reduced. The market dominance requirement should be simplified. Use mandatory binding arbitration between shippers and railroads to resolve rate disputes. Lower the STB's jurisdictional threshold from the current level of 180% of revenue to variable cost. While shippers contend that the rate complaint process needs serious repair, shippers believe that increasing competition in the railroad industry would do more to lower rates and diminish the need for a rate complaint process. Proposals to increase railroad competition identified in this report include the following: Require the STB to grant trackage rights; require reciprocal switching at the nearest junction or interchange upon request of a shipper or competing railroad; and increase rail access for shortline and regional railroads. Overturn the STB's ``bottle neck'' decision by requiring railroads to quote a rate for all route segments. Consolidation in the railroad industry has diminished competition, thwarting the intended objectives of deregulation to allow competition to lower rates and improve service. The rate protection intended for shippers without effective competition has been de-railed by a complex; costly; and time consuming web of discoveries, findings, and appeals that take years and cost millions of dollars. The result is that we have more captive shippers whose only recourse for rate protection is an impossible process that is simply not worth the expense. This cannot continue. Small shippers are forced to take on well financed railroad corporations populated with hundreds of lawyers who can use the complex system to make rate relief an impossible maze of endless filings, appeals, and delays. In the GAO's survey, shippers emphasized the time, cost, and complexity involved in filing a rate complaint as significant enough barriers as to prevent them from attempting to seek rate relief through the STB process. Since the railroad industry has blanket antitrust immunity--which is a status not enjoyed by another industry-- captive shippers have no recourse and will remain overcharged unless Congress takes some action to level the field. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. Attached is a summary of the bill's provisions. I ask unanimous consent that the summary be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I am very pleased to join Senators Rockefeller, Burns, and Roberts today in introducing the ``Railroad Competition and Service improvement Act of 1999.'' This legislation is designed to stimulate railroad competition and level the field for shippers who need relief from unreasonable rates. Earlier this month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report on the barriers to rate relief that prevent small captive shippers from unreasonable rates. That report, outlined below, identified a number of remedies that would give captive shippers a fighting chance at rate relief. This legislation closely mirrors the GAO's findings and if enacted, would go a long way to improve rail service and promote competition. In my home state of North Dakota over fifty percent of the state economy is dependent upon agriculture. Our ability to move its agricultural production to distant markets affects large sectors of North Dakota's economy. Over eighty percent of all the grain shipped out-of-state moves by rail and 97 percent of North Dakota's grain elevators have access to only one railroad. Those who survive on farming and those who live in states like North Dakota whose main business is agriculture have a great deal at stake when it comes to rail transportation. Overcharges cost us millions of dollars a year, adding a substantial cost to a product that already operates at very low margins. Since virtually all of the shippers in North Dakota are subject to monopoly service, our farmers and county grain elevators are paying a premium for a service they cannot afford to live without. Rail service in this country is supposed to be competitive where the forces of competition determine shipping rates and in the absence of competition, the STB is suppose to have a process that will protect captive shippers from overcharges. Unfortunately, rail competition is more of an exception than the rule and the process that is designed to protect captive shippers is so costly and time-consuming that shippers are without recourse; left to the mercy of monopoly railroads who not only determine whether or not their product will get to market but also how much they will charge to deliver that product. This is a circumstance that must be addressed as the Congress considers the reauthorization of the STB this year. Prior to 1976, the ICC regulated almost all the rates that railroads charged shippers. The Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Act (1976) and the Staggers Rail Act (1980) limited the regulation of the rail industry by allowing the ICC to regulate rates only where railroads have no effective competition and established the ICC's process for resolving rate disputes. At the time when the Congress began the process of railroad deregulation (1976) there were 63 class I railroads in the United States. By 1997, through mergers and other factors, the number of class I railroads shrunk to nine. These nine carriers accounted for more than 90 percent of the industry's freight revenue and 71 percent of the industry's mileage operated in 1997. In July, 1998, the STB approved another Class I merger by splitting the assets of Conrail between CSX and Norfolk Southern (reducing the Class I count to 8 once implemented). Another merger between Canadian National Railway and Illinois Central is pending before the STB. This consolidation has diminished competition, creating an even greater dependence upon a rate relief process through a regulatory body such as the STB. Agricultural, utility, and chemical industries in particular rely heavily upon rail transportation and the cost of unreasonable rail rates has a dramatic impact on these important industries. According to GAO/RCED-99-46, ``Railroad Regulation: Current Issues Associated With the Rate Relief Process,'' February 1999, ``[t]he Surface Transportation Board's standard procedures for obtaining rate relief are highly complex and time-consuming'' and the GAO estimates that over ``70 percent [of shippers] believe that the time, complexity, and costs of filing complaints are barriers that often preclude them from seeking relief.'' The report documents that the process for a small captive shipper to obtain rate relief under the current regulatory and legal framework is broken and unworkable. The reasons for these barriers are multiple: (A) Historical regulatory precedence has created a complex web of hurdles an barriers building an insurmountable maze for a small shipper to seek rate relief; (B) contradictory statutorily directives based on a statute that was designed to protect the financial health of railroads while at the same time attempt to protect the needs of shippers to challenge unreasonable rates; and (C) the time and cost entailed in filing a rate complaint has reached absurd levels, far outweighing the potential savings that could be achieved through a successful challenge to an unreasonable rate. The STB rate complaint process involves an up front filing fee cost of $54,500 ($5,400 for the simplified guidelines)--plus the costs of pursuing the case through years of negotiation through a complex maze of discovery; evidentiary hearings; rebuttals; and administrative appeals. Seeking rate relief under the current process is very costly to shippers. The rate relief cases analyzed by the GAO cost shippers between $500,000 to $3 million each to file and wade through the process and took between a few months and 16 years to resolve. For example, the McCarty Farms case took over 16 years to resolve and ended up in Federal District Court. The GAO surveyed over 700 shippers and found that (a) 75 percent of the shippers believed that they are overcharged with unreasonable rates; and (b) over 70 percent of the shippers believed that the time, complexity, and costs of filing complaints create unsurmountable barriers and therefore preclude them from pursuing the rate relief they are entitled to under the law. (It is not surprising that the GAO found that the railroad monopolies unanimously support the current process and see no need for change.) The report reviewed all the rate relief filings pending before the STB (and its predecessor, the ICC) since 1990. The GAO found that only 41 rate relief filings were either pending or have been filed since 1990. About half of these complaints were settled outside of the STB's process and therefore dismissed. Of the remaining complaints, 7 were decided in favor of the railroad and only 2 have been decided in favor of the shipper; 9 are still pending; and 5 were dismissed without settlement. The GAO also found that, in 1997, only 18 percent of the total tonnage shipped via rail in this country is subject to rate regulation by the STB. About 70 percent of all shipments is exempt because it is shipped under contract and the STB has exempted another 12 percent. Thus, the GAO's analysis of barriers to shippers only relates to a portion of the total tonnage of rail shipments in the United States. The ICC Terminations Act required the STB to develop simplified procedures for rate complaint filings. While the STB has developed those simplified procedures, the railroad industry has already challenged them in court and not a single shipper has filed a complaint under these new procedures since the STB issued the simplified guidelines in December 1996. The GAO survey of shippers found that the vast majority of shippers (over 70%) believe that the STB rate relief process is too costly, complex, and time consuming. Shippers identified the following barriers to obtaining rate relief under the current process: The legal costs associated with filing complaints outweighs the benefits of winning relief. The rate complaint process is too complex and takes too long. Developing the stand alone revenue to variable cost model (shippers are required to calculate that the rate they are charged exceeds 180% of the revenue to variable cost of a hypothetical railroad to provide them service) is too costly. Most shippers believe that the STB is most likely to decide in favor of the railroad so the effort is not worth its costs. The discovery process is too difficult because the shipper is dependent upon the railroad for all the necessary data to calculate the revenue to variable cost ratio. Responding to the railroad requests for discovery is too difficult and time consuming (note: the GAO identified instances in its analysis of the 41 cases filed since 1990 that railroads often extended the complaint process through lengthy discovery requests). Fear of reprisal from the railroads. The STB filing fee in itself is too high to consider filing a rate complaint. The GAO report found that shippers desire to see (1) a more simplified rate complaint process and (2) increased competition in the railroad industry that would lower rates and diminish the need for a rate complaint process. According to the GAO report, the vast majority of shippers believe that the following changes in the rate relief process are necessary to provide them with the ability to seek the rate relief-- The STB's time limit for deciding a rate relief case should be shortened (the current limit is 16 months). The complaint fee required upon fining should be eliminated or reduced. The market dominance requirement should be simplified. Use mandatory binding arbitration between shippers and railroads to resolve rate disputes. Lower the STB's jurisdictional threshold from the current level of 180% of revenue to variable cost. While shippers contend that the rate complaint process needs serious repair, shippers believe that increasing competition in the railroad industry would do more to lower rates and diminish the need for a rate complaint process. Proposals to increase railroad competition identified in this report include the following: Require the STB to grant trackage rights; require reciprocal switching at the nearest junction or interchange upon request of a shipper or competing railroad; and increase rail access for shortline and regional railroads. Overturn the STB's ``bottle neck'' decision by requiring railroads to quote a rate for all route segments. Consolidation in the railroad industry has diminished competition, thwarting the intended objectives of deregulation to allow competition to lower rates and improve service. The rate protection intended for shippers without effective competition has been de-railed by a complex; costly; and time consuming web of discoveries, findings, and appeals that take years and cost millions of dollars. The result is that we have more captive shippers whose only recourse for rate protection is an impossible process that is simply not worth the expense. This cannot continue. Small shippers are forced to take on well financed railroad corporations populated with hundreds of lawyers who can use the complex system to make rate relief an impossible maze of endless filings, appeals, and delays. In the GAO's survey, shippers emphasized the time, cost, and complexity involved in filing a rate complaint as significant enough barriers as to prevent them from attempting to seek rate relief through the STB process. Since the railroad industry has blanket antitrust immunity--which is a status not enjoyed by another industry-- captive shippers have no recourse and will remain overcharged unless Congress takes some action to level the field. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation. Attached is a summary of the bill's provisions. I ask unanimous consent that the summary be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I thank the Chair. The second half of this amendment would allow for the opportunity to have a standardized report card on schools--not students, schools. What does it mean if your child gets the best grades in the worst school in the school district? We know about our children. Our children bring home report cards every 6 weeks or 9 weeks. We don't know about our schools. Do you get a report card on your school? You sure don't. Oh, there are some 30 States that call for a certain kind of report card. Most parents have never seen one. This would suggest that parents ought to be able to understand what they have received from that school with the investment they have made. How does that school compare to other schools? How does your State compare to other States? That is what this report card proposal would do. It would say, let's do for schools what we do for students, and let's allow parents the opportunity to understand how well their school does in educating children. I have been joined by Senator Bingaman in offering this amendment. We have added it to the Feinstein amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me ask unanimous consent for 1 minute.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I would say to the Senator from Vermont, the amendment Senator Feinstein has offered is an amendment that combines her amendment and my amendment. We have done that at the request of the majority leader. So rather than having two amendments, we will have only one and we will have only one vote on it.

Mr. DORGAN. I will not use all of that, but I did want to say to Senator Feinstein that the ending of social promotion is an opportunity to invest in young lives in a way that will solve problems now, rather than deferring them until much, much later. By ending social promotion we can prevent much bigger problems later in a young person s life. I happen to have, as most parents do, a profound conflict of interest here. I have two children in public elementary school: one in fourth grade and one in sixth grade. I do homework most evenings with them, and the homework is getting tougher these days. My children are in public schools, and I don't know what people are talking about when they talk about failing scores and how the public school system does not work. I am enormously proud of our public school system and what we have accomplished through public schools in this country. But I also know that the only way a public school system works is with parental involvement. If the parent is not involved in the child's education, it is not going to work very well. There are three things you need for education to work: a teacher who knows how to teach, a student willing to learn, and a parent involved in the education of that student. When those three things are present, education works. The Senator from California, in the first part of this amendment, offers a proposal that I think has great merit and is long overdue. I did not speak about it when I spoke about my half of the amendment, but I just want to tell her that I think what she is offering has great, great merit and will be profoundly important to children in this country. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. How much time remains on the 15 minutes?

Mr. DORGAN. I am pleased today to join my colleague from California. I was listening to her explain the first portion of the amendment which deals with social promotion and remedial education. It reminded me that the last time we joined forces here on the floor of the Senate was also on an education amendment. We worked on a very simple amendment called the Gun-Free Schools Act. This is now the law in this country and has been for a number of years because we decided there ought to be a zero tolerance in this country for a student who brings a gun to school. You ought not have to worry, no matter where you are in the country, about guns in schools. Everywhere in this country, we ought to understand that guns and schools do not mix, and every student and every parent ought to understand there is a penalty of expulsion for one year for bringing a gun to school. I am pleased to have joined with my colleague from California to make that Federal law, and I wonder how many tragedies may have been avoided where guns were not brought to school because a student now understands there is zero tolerance with respect to guns in schools. Today we are here for a different purpose on the same subject: education. The first part of the amendment we have offered deals with social promotion. The second part is a piece that I have written with Senator Bingaman from New Mexico regarding the issue of a school report card. Let me explain that amendment. Every 6 to 9 weeks in this country, a parent with a child in school gets a report card that tells the parent how that child has done. Parents are able to see grades that describe how their child is doing in school, an A, a B, a C, or God forbid, maybe a D or even worse. Students are graded and parents know what grades those students are achieving in their school. But I raise a question: What does it mean when your child brings home the best grades from the worst school? Does that tell you much as a parent? You see, we grade students, but there aren't any grades for schools. There are no report cards for schools. Even though we spend over $300 billion on a system of elementary and secondary education in our country, parents and taxpayers have no way of knowing how that school is performing. We grade the children who are in that system, but we do not require a report card on how well our schools are doing so that parents also know how well their school is doing compared to other schools, how well their State is doing compared to other States. A number of States already have school report cards, but very few of them have report cards that provide a range of information on school quality indicators important to the public. And more notably, very few states get that information to the parents themselves. So the parents, as the taxpayers who own that school, who provide the resources to run that school, have very little information about how well that school does. Again, I return to the question: What does it mean for your child to be the best student in the worst school? With this amendment, we propose to offer a Standardized School Report Card Act, which would say to all the schools around the country that, most of you are already preparing some kind of report card, but let's all do it all in the same general way so that we can make some reasonable comparisons, school to school and State to State. We want the report card to grade a school on six areas: 1, student performance; 2, professional qualifications of the teachers; 3, average class size; 4, school safety; 5, parental involvement; and 6, student dropout rates. As I mentioned, more than 35 States now have some form of a school report card. My State does, although my State's report card doesn't do anything more than simply to ask the school to look ahead to prepare for changes in enrollment in the years ahead. It is not a very substantive report card, and most parents in my State have never seen this report card. I would like, at the end of this process, to provide virtually every parent in this country who has a child in school with a report that says, here is how your child is doing, and another report that says, here is how your school is doing related to other schools, other communities, other States. That would be good information for the taxpayers and the parents of our country to have. I was thinking, as I was listening to my colleague from California, about a young girl named Rosie Two Bears. She is likely in class this afternoon in Cannon Ball, ND. I toured that school some while ago. I don't know what a report card will say to the parents of Rosie. That school is unsafe and in desperate need of repair. I have described on the floor on previous occasions the condition of that school. They have 150 students, one water fountain, and two bathrooms, kids cramped together in classes without an inch between their desks and no place to plug in a computer to get to the Internet, because the school won't accommodate wiring of that sort. In the downstairs area where they have band and chorus, the room frequently is evacuated because sewer gas backs up and the students can't learn in a room full of sewer gas backing up into the school. It is an awful situation. What would a report card say about the school of Rosie Two Bears? Perhaps if there were a report card that drove home to parents and taxpayers the unsafe conditions of their children s school, there would be a public outcry to improve that school. The Ojibwa school, up on the Turtle Hill Mountain Indian Reservation, is another example of a tragedy waiting to happen, with all of these kids learning in detached trailers, going back and forth between classes in the winter. I have been there and seen exposed wiring. I can show you the reports that show that school is unsafe. Everybody knows it, and there is no money to build a new school for those children. Addressing this problem will be part of an another debate that we want to happen, but right now, this amendment is about four or five good ideas on education that won't break the bank, that represent good investments in our kids, represent good approaches to improve and strengthen education in this country. If we can do these things together, we will have done something very important for our children. When we consider a report card that all parents could receive, I go back to the point that wouldn't it be nice for the parents of students--whether they go to your school or my school or to the Cannon Ball School or the Ojibwa school--to be able to see what their child is getting from that school? What are we getting for our tax investment in that school? Are we proud, as parents, as the teachers who teach in that school, of the building we have housed our children in, of the textbooks we have provided? Are we doing the right things? That is what Senator Bingaman and I and others would like to achieve with this standardized report card for schools. The Senator from California knows, because I have heard her speak of it, that the American people view education as one of their top priorities. Often people talk about how far ahead of politicians the people are. Well, that certainly is true with respect to education. People know what is important. When people sit around the dinner table at night and talk about their lives, what are the first things they talk about? They talk about what their children are learning in school, are we proud of that school? Are our folks getting good health care? Do we have a good job? The central things in life. Children and school represent a priority for many of us. It is why I am pleased that one of the first bills on the floor of the Senate following impeachment is about education. It is why we have pushed so hard to be able to offer amendments to it. Our purpose is not to be destructive, but to focus on a number of steps we can take to improve education. I think Ed-Flex is fine. With this bill we are saying give the States some flexibility, but that is not all there is with respect to education policy. There are other ideas, good ideas. The attempt around here all too often is to get the worst of what both sides have to offer rather than the best of what each has to offer. We have some good ideas. Ed-Flex is a fine idea. Let us add some other good ideas to it: dealing with class size, a school report card, ending social promotion, addressing the problems of students dropping out. Those are good ideas and are central to what the American people believe could strengthen education in this country. I hope that, when we have offered these amendments--some good ideas, I think, from both sides--there will be some positive votes on these ideas, so that this Ed-Flex legislation will leave the Senate in a much stronger position to positively influence the lives of young Americans and families. I will have been proud to play one small part of that with my colleague from California. Mr. President, I retain the remainder of my time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, on Thursday evening, March 4 and Friday, March 5, I was necessarily absent because of several long-standing commitments in Bismarck. It was important that I be in North Dakota for a conference I cosponsored, Women's Health-Women's Lives, to join Secretary of Energy Richardson for meetings on a range of energy issues, and for a meeting with the Governor and other state leaders about the state's water resources. Had I been present for rollcall vote No. 32, to table the Jeffords amendment to S. 280, the Ed-Flex legislation, I would have voted ``nay.'' On rollcall vote No. 33, to table the Gramm amendment to prohibit implementation of the ``Know Your Customer'' banking regulations, I would have voted ``nay'' had I been present.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, first let me ask consent to yield myself 15 minutes of the time allocated to our side, that I might be able to present my amendment. Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if the Senator would yield for a brief question.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, we are on the right subject. The question here is education. But in this great deliberative body, as it is called, we have some who do not want us to debate the principles of education and ideas that exist, here in the Chamber of the Senate. Let me show a graph, if I might. It will be hard for people to see this, but it describes where we are. We have an education bill on the floor of the Senate. To that education bill is offered an amendment by Senator Gramm, an amendment to the Gramm amendment by Senator Jeffords, then a Jeffords substitute, then a Bingaman amendment, and then the Lott substitute. Then we come in with the Kennedy motion to recommit in order to do the class size amendment. Then we have a Lott amendment to that, followed by a Lott amendment to the Lott amendment. What does all that mean? It is a legislative way of plugging up this system so nothing can happen unless those who run the place want it to happen. It is a legislative mechanism to prevent debate and action on the ideas that we have about education. What are those ideas? The bill on the floor is called Ed-Flex. That is an idea about flexibility. There are other ideas--one we debated last year, reducing class size K-3; 100,000 new teachers who reduce class size, because kids learn better when they are in classes of 15 than if they are in classes of 30 kids. That is common sense. That is an idea, the Kennedy-Murray amendment. School construction--repairing and renovating and building schools where we have schools in disrepair. I have talked at length about schools that are in disrepair; classrooms with sewer gas coming up into the classrooms and kids have to be removed; classrooms that are unsafe. I have talked at length about those issues here on the floor of the Senate. Afterschool programs is another idea. An idea I want to offer, an amendment I want to offer that I am prevented from offering by this plugging system here in the legislative assembly is a school report card. Every 6 or 9 weeks all across this country parents get report cards about how their kids are doing. How is the school performing, however? What about how is the school doing? What does it mean if your kid gets the best grades in the worst school? What does that mean? How does your school do compared to other schools? How does your State do compared to other States? What are you getting for hundreds of billions of dollars we are spending to educate our kids? How about grading our schools? I want to offer that amendment. I want that grading system to be a system that every parent in every corner of this country can understand and recognize and use. Mr. President, I graduated in a high school class of nine. We didn't have particularly advanced mathematics courses, but I know enough about what is going on from that kind of education to understand what is going on here on the floor of the Senate. We have an education bill on the floor of the Senate. A number of us have amendments we want to offer to that bill, have a debate, and have votes on our amendments. Those who run this place say no, it is not how we are going to operate. It is our ideas or no ideas. It is our agenda or no agenda. It is a vote on our bill or on our amendments, or no votes. That is not the way this place ought to operate. Education is a priority and should be a priority in the legislative agenda of this Senate. But it ought not be a narrow agenda that says we will only consider a piece of legislation called Ed-Flex and then prevent everyone else from offering their amendments. I heard a speaker yesterday say about this class size amendment, that is the Senate wanting to run the local school districts. Nonsense. Let me read a comment from a Republican last year when we passed a piece of legislation that called for some additional teachers. Congressman Goodling, a Republican, said, ``This is a real victory for the Republican Congress, but more importantly, it is a huge win for local educators and parents who are fed up with Washington mandates.'' So I hear somebody stand up over there yesterday and say what we are trying to do somehow is to run the local school systems--absolute nonsense. It is nonsense, as indicated by Mr. Goodling, a Republican, who last year said this is good public policy; this is policy everybody ought to support. In fact, this is Republican policy, he said. Now it appears we cannot even get a vote on it. So I urge the majority leader and others to bring a piece of legislation to the floor, open it up, let's have a debate, let's offer amendments--let's get the best of what everyone has to offer here on the floor of the Senate. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time.

Mr. DORGAN. I appreciate the courtesy. One of the difficulties we have is being able to offer amendments. And the Senator seemed to suggest at some other point education issues will be brought to the floor with an open opportunity for people to offer a series of ideas and amendments. Is the Senator speaking for the majority leader on that? Because we have had great difficulty in obtaining that status on the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I rise to introduce the Health Insurance Cost Tax Equity Act of 1999, to immediately put our nation's sole proprietors on par with their larger corporate competitors with respect to the tax treatment of their health insurance costs, without any further delay. I have argued for some time that it's indefensible that our federal tax laws tell some of our biggest corporations that they can deduct 100 percent of their health insurance costs, while others, mostly smaller businesses, are told they can deduct only a smaller share of their health insurance costs. Although we've recently made some progress in addressing this problem, the appropriate solution remains elusive. Moreover, the reasons for promptly correcting this tax inequity are even more urgent today as many small businesses, especially our family farmers, are now facing the financial struggles of their lives. Not only is continued delay of this equitable tax treatment unacceptable for family farmers and ranchers whose documented risks in business are reflected in higher health costs, but it's also diverting resources away from the operations of farms, ranches and Main Street businesses in rural America at a time when many simply can't afford it. Over the past several years, Congress has taken some steps in addressing this unfair disparity in the deductibility of health insurance costs by allowing sole proprietors to deduct a larger share of their health insurance costs. But we've been taking steps that are too small and too slow. This year, sole proprietors may deduct only 60- percent of their health insurance costs for tax purposes. This glaring unfairness is scheduled to be fixed by the year 2003, when our nation's small business owners will finally be able to claim a 100-percent deduction, just like large corporations already enjoy. But this is simply too late for many small businesses. We can no longer delay providing this tax relief because many of the self-employed who would benefit from it--including farmers and ranchers--are struggling through the worst farm crisis in memory. That's why my legislation would provide farmers, ranchers and other sole proprietors a full, 100-percent tax deduction for this year's health insurance costs. Mr. President, the health of a farm family or small business owner is no less important than the health of the president of a large corporation, and the Internal Revenue Code should reflect this simple fact now. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this legislation and join me in immediately ending this tax inequity at the first available opportunity.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the resolution. In the past, the U.S. has rightfully been the strongest critic of human rights abuses in China. So I was disappointed, as I think most in the Senate were, that the President chose not to sponsor a resolution condemning China's human rights practices at last year's annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The United States has sponsored such a resolution at each of these annual meetings since 1990. Although I didn't agree with that decision, I understood the reasoning behind it. China seemed to be making some progress. It had signed the UN Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights, and committed itself to signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Perhaps reform was at hand. And I certainly favor building a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship with China. But recent history indicates that China often makes such concessions until the world's attention is focused elsewhere, and then quickly reverts back to it's policy of severe intolerance and repression. In 1993, for instance, when human rights became an issue in Beijing's bid to host the Olympics, China released its most prominent dissident, Wei Jingsheng. The Olympics were awarded to Australia, and Wei was detained again the following year. Similarly, just last December, 6 months after signing the ICCPR, China sentenced three democratic activists to prison terms of 10 years or more for trying to organize a political party. A fourth dissenter was given a 10-year sentence for allegedly ``providing intelligence to hostile foreign organizations.'' His crime? He gave an interview to Radio Free Asia about farmer protests. And the Chinese premier, Jiang Zemin, recently stated that China needed to ``nip those factors that undermine social stability in the bud, no matter where they come from,'' and that ``the Western mode of political systems must never be copied.'' However, this is not about ``western political systems,'' it is about internationally recognized human rights. Respect for these rights must be real, and it must be systemic. Empty commitments and token gestures are meaningless, and we should not allow them to sway us from advocating on behalf of those who are imprisoned in China, or will be, for exercising freedoms acknowledged by the world community. An international resolution condemning China's human rights practices is strongly supported by human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. By passing such a resolution, the international community can demonstrate that we will no longer be duped by false promises.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this Congress, now that it will turn its attention to the committee structure and the agenda that will be developed in the authorizing committees and Appropriations Committee, will talk about a lot of different issues, will describe many different priorities. Among those priorities will be, for example, a piece of legislation we just passed in the Senate dealing with military pay. I assume that very soon there will be a national missile defense bill that will come to the floor that will be subject to dramatic and interesting debate, and there are a range of these kinds of issues. I want to raise one issue today that I think we ought to act on with some priority. There is a program that not many people know of called Walking Shield. It is a program to move houses that are surplus houses scheduled to be demolished on our military bases when those houses are to be replaced with more modern houses. Instead of demolishing the old houses, they are now moved out increasingly under the project Operation Walking Shield and moved to Indian reservations where there is a desperate need for good housing. Operation Walking Shield is a wonderful program that takes houses that would have been demolished and moves them to a foundation someplace on an Indian reservation to provide housing for those Americans who do not have housing. We have a real emergency in this country, particularly on Indian reservations, dealing with housing, health care, and education. I want to read a few paragraphs from a letter to describe this emergency and why this Congress must respond to it with some priority and why I hope the President will do the same. I want to read about a woman named Sarah. Her name was Sarah Swift Hawk. Sarah died January 2. Sarah Swift Hawk died on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She froze to death. Let me read to you a letter that describes the circumstances leading to Sarah's death: The night of January 2 was truly a dreadful night for the Swift Hawk family. They had run out of propane to heat their house. They also had no wood for their wood stove, although they tried desperately to obtain some wood, but without any success. The Swift Hawk house is but one of 100,000 terribly substandard houses that exist on our nation's Indian reservations. The house had only thin plastic sheeting covering two large openings where windows were supposed to be. As night fell, and the temperature plummeted from 16 degrees below zero to 45 degrees below zero, Sarah's daughter and her son-in-law, who live in the same house with their six children, put two blankets on Sarah in an attempt to keep her warm. The mother then took the other two blankets they had, and placed them over her six children who were all huddled together on the floor where she and her husband would also sleep. Since there was only one cot in the house, that bed was given to Sarah who was the grandmother in the family. Everyone else in the Swift Hawk family has to sleep on the floor because the family is too poor to buy any furniture. When the Sun came up on Sunday morning, January 3rd, the daughter got up from the floor to check on her mother, and she found that her mother had died during the night, frozen to death as a result of exposure to extreme cold. Fortunately, the body heat from the parents and the children, all huddled together on the floor, kept them alive that terrible night. Sarah Swift Hawk's needless death is repeated again and again on our nation's Indian reservations, particularly those in the Northern Plains States. This is a letter from Phil Stevens. Phil Stevens runs the program called Walking Shield. I have met with him a number of times, helped them on legislation to try to move some houses to Indian reservations. I have seen the joy on the faces of those who received a home--one put on a foundation for them--a home that they could move into for the first time, a home for their children. But, frankly, there is just a trickle--a few hundred homes here and there to meet the needs that are so desperate of people like Sarah Swift Hawk and her family. When you hear stories like this you think, well, that happens in a Third World country someplace, someone laying down and freezing to death in their home. This wasn't a Third World country, it was in our country. The poverty in these areas is so desperate, housing so inadequate, the health care so minimal and the education needs so substantial. And frankly, we have so many other priorities that folks come to the floor of the House and the Senate and they debate this or that with great gusto, and as we do, Sarah Swift Hawk dies, frozen to death in a house, a house without windows, a house with thin plastic sheets where windows should have existed at 45 degrees below zero. Is that a shame? Yes. I think it is shameful that this happens in our country. This is not some mysterious illness for which there is not a cure. We know this happens, and we know how to address these questions. I hope President Clinton and the 106th Congress will decide that these are emergency conditions that exist in housing, health care, and education on our Indian reservations and that we ought to address them. I have spoken on the floor previously about a third grader in a school in Cannon Ball, ND, a young Native American girl who said to me, ``Mr. Senator, will you be building us a new school?'' Because that young third grade Indian child goes to a school that is not fit. It is not a school that Members of the Senate would send their children to, and it is not the fault of the school board, not the fault of the superintendent, and not the fault of the teachers who are trying very hard. This is a school without a tax base, 150 kids, one water faucet, two bathrooms. They cannot connect to the Internet because about half the school is too old, too condemned, not able to access the wiring. This is a school that is in desperate need of repair. One of the rooms has sewer gas seeping up into it that requires the room to be evacuated occasionally because they can't keep children in a room where the sewer gas keeps backing up. That is the kind of school we have a third grader walk through the door of, and we say to that third grader, ``This is your school.'' Are we proud of that? I don't think so. Ought we do something about it? Does that young third grader's life depend on us doing something? It does, and we should. We all know the problems in health care. I just met with a group a few minutes ago, this afternoon. Let me just tell you about health care for a moment. This group was talking about foster children. On one of the reservations, a young 4-year-old boy had been in two foster homes and was being moved again, and the caseworker noticed some substantial stench when he was in the vicinity of the 4-year-old boy. What was it that smelled so bad? A 4-year-old boy wearing a cast on his arm because he had a broken arm, but through two foster homes no one had bothered to take him back to the doctor and the cast had been on 6 months. He had gangrene on his arm. Now, is that an emergency in health care? I think so. It is just a symptom, just the tip of the iceberg of massive problems --massive problems--that exist in health care, education and housing. You know, I am talking now about the problems on Indian reservations. I want to tell you about pinning medals one day on the pajamas of an Indian named Edmond Young Eagle, a Native American who grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation, Fort Yates, ND, a proud member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. He went overseas to fight for this country--Africa, Europe--fought for America in the Second World War. And if you look at the Indian population of this country and the percentage of veterans they have and who fought in our country's wars, you will find a very high percent of the Indian population went off to fight for this country. Edmond did-- fought across the world in the Second World War. When I met Edmond, he was dying, laying in a VA hospital. His family had contacted me and said Edmond had never received his medals for his service in the Second World War. They wanted to know if there was any chance to get these medals he was owed from the Defense Department before he died. I got the medals and I took them to the VA hospital on a Sunday morning in Fargo, ND. Edmond Young Eagle had lung cancer. I did not know it that Sunday morning, but 7 days later Edmond Young Eagle would die from lung cancer. But that Sunday morning they cranked up his bed to a sitting position, and he was wearing his pajamas. And in a ceremony, witnessed by his doctors and nurses and his sisters and some people who had come from the Old Soldiers Home, I pinned medals on Edmond Young Eagle's pajamas, the medals he had earned for his service to our country in the Second World War. And this man dying of lung cancer said to me, ``You know, this is the proudest day of my life.'' I thought to myself, what a paradox it is that this man, who served his country honorably in the Second World War, fought for America's freedom, and then never had much the rest of his life, at the end of his life, lying in the hospital, suffering from lung cancer, felt so strongly about his service to his country and was so proud of receiving medals from his country for his service to America that he said it was one of the proudest days of his life. We have a responsibility, it seems to me, to the memory of Edmond Young Eagle, to the third grade girl that I talked about going to a school that ought to be improved, to the memory of Sarah Swift Hawk, who goes to sleep in a house at 45 below zero, and dies in her sleep, freezes to death, we owe it to these folks--to their memories, to their children--we owe it to them to do something about these issues on an emergency basis. There are a lot of things that we will debate back and forth on the floor of this Senate, as I said--defense policy, education policy, health care policy--so many issues day after day. But these are the kinds of things that we must put at the front of the line, to say people ought not to be freezing to death in our country because they run out of fuel in the winter, because they live in houses that ought not be inhabited in the winter, because they do not have housing, because they do not have health care. We can do something about this. Let me conclude again by saying, I am trying to see that the White House determines this is a priority and an emergency, that we have an emergency, a housing emergency and health care emergency on our Indian reservations that we ought to address. This isn't a case where any of us can just say, well, gosh, that is somebody else's problem. It is not somebody else's problem. When we have young children who are not receiving the medical attention they need, who are put in foster homes that are unsafe and where they are beaten--I ve told a story about a young girl with her nose broken, hair pulled out at the roots, her arm broken in a foster home, placed in a foster home by one worker who had 150 cases to work on. So you put a child at age 3 in a foster home without understanding what kind of home this is. And then there is a drunken party, and a 3- year-old girl gets her arm broken, her nose broken, and her hair pulled out by the roots. Is that what we want in this country? Of course not. It is our responsibility to address these issues. And it is, indeed, an emergency when a 3-year-old girl is beaten, when a third grade girl is denied an adequate education, when a grandmother named Sarah Swift Hawk freezes to death. These are emergencies. And we need to do something about them. I am hoping the White House will declare these as emergencies. And I am hoping the Congress will understand that we can, with a small investment, make life so much better for a lot of folks who matter in this country--folks like Edmond Young Eagle--who have served this country with great distinction and great honor. In their memory, and just because it is the right thing to do, our country has a responsibility to decide this is a priority. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The answer, I say, to that is once you change the Tax Code, that change is generally permanent unless altered. We have had the experience before of a very aggressive appetite to reduce taxes, only to discover that we run into a recession, experience very significant Federal budget deficits, and then the confidence of the people about the future tends to erode and you have a further economic contraction. I say to the Senator from West Virginia, one of the things that I think is very important is to the extent that there would be tax cuts following a reduction in Federal debt and shoring up Social Security, I hope that it will be triggered by the actual experience of the surplus. If you don't have a mechanism to trigger the tax cuts, what will happen ultimately will be an economic slowdown--nobody has repealed the business cycle--and experience significant budget deficits.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from West Virginia. I raise this issue today only because it will be one of perhaps five or six significant issues we will debate in the coming months. I do not think that my idea is exclusively good and that there are no other good ideas out there. I have great respect for others here who might disagree strongly with my view on these issues. I want to, as we begin this debate, at least stake out the ground that some of us would feel strongly about--debt reduction and other responsible actions in fiscal policy. I look forward to this. This has been a tough 6 or 7 weeks as we have started this session because of the impeachment trial. Most of us come here relishing the idea and fostering the appetite for debate about the public issues that really matter to this country in economics, health care, and education. So I look forward to it in the coming days and weeks.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me, on behalf of the entire Senate, thank the distinguished Senator, Mr. Byrd, for those wonderful words. I attended the memorial service for Scott Bates on Saturday and heard Senator Byrd deliver those reflections. And I guess there is no one in the Senate who could have done what Senator Byrd regularly does in expressing the collective will of the Senate. With the passing of Scott, we lost a wonderful member of the Senate family. And Senator Byrd, not just on this occasion but on virtually all occasions like this, reaches out and touches others in a very special way. I recall when my daughter died that Senator Byrd reached out to me and offered me a piece of prose that still sits in my top desk drawer. Senator Hatch sent me a white leather-bound Bible that still rests behind my desk for reference. That is what the Senate is like. It is not so much about Republicans and Democrats; it is about people who work together, who have a passionate interest in serving this country. And it is not just those who are elected who have that passionate interest. There are a myriad of wonderful, qualified, committed, dedicated staff persons who work in this building who make this democracy of ours work. And losing Scott Bates was a tragic loss for all of us. Frankly, I did not know Scott particularly well. I knew him as a fun person to banter and visit and joke with from time to time and knew his sonorous voice as he called the roll. And I knew him as a very special member of the Senate family. But I believe on Saturday I got to know him well through his family. Senator Byrd described the memorial service. I would say, as just one visitor to that memorial service, how wonderful it would be if all of us could leave such a family behind, as Scott did. His two daughters and the son who spoke at that memorial service are remarkable young people who will contribute much to our country. That is the lasting tribute to Scott. So let me again, on behalf of the entire Senate, thank Senator Byrd for his presentation on Saturday. And, coincidentally, I had asked him this morning if I could have a copy of his presentation. He said he would be putting it in the Senate Record. Now all of the Senators will be able to share, with him, the words that he offered on our behalf on Saturday. Mr. President, I would like, by consent, to be able to be recognized to speak on a different subject.