Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the 105th Congress is limping to a close, and I listened to my colleague from Idaho who, incidentally, I think is a good legislator and does good work in this Chamber. He is someone with whom I am pleased to work on a wide range of issues, including agricultural issues. But I must say that I have a different view of the 105th Congress. Abraham Lincoln once said, ``Die when I may. Let it be said by those who know me best that I always picked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.'' Let me talk for a minute about thistles and flowers. There is apparently a 4,000 page bill lying in state--Lord knows in what room; I guess it's over here in 224. I heard the previous speaker from Minnesota say it was 40 pounds. I expect that is a guess because he probably didn't weigh it. I guess that the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Minnesota, and most other Senators here have not read it. It is a process that results in a lot of concern here in the Congress. There are 4,000 pages on display. The whole country is moving toward miniaturization and we are going in exactly the opposite direction. On the final day of the legislative session, we are going to have a 4,000-page bill--a third of the Federal budget--presented in the Senate, and we are told to vote up or down on this. ``We assume you have read it, even though we know you just got back into town.'' Let me talk about a thistle for just a minute. In this piece of legislation is a provision called section 1005 of the Revenues and Medicare part of the Omnibus Bill, which contains the so-called Subpart F Active Financing Provisions. Now, there might be a couple of Americans who are intimately familiar with Subpart F of the Tax Code and its Active Financing Provisions--but not many. These provisions were added at a time when I spent a lot of time on this floor trying to get some money for the construction of Indian schools, for the Ojibwa School that is falling apart. Kids are walking between trailers in the winter with howling winds blowing and are going back and forth to trailers. These are conditions that every study says are unsafe, but you can't get money to improve these conditions; there's not enough money. Or the Cannonball School, where a little girl named Rosie said to me, ``Mr. Senator, will you buy us a new school?'' There are 150 kids there, and there's only one water fountain and two bathrooms. One of the rooms those kids study music in stinks of sewer gas once or twice a week and they have to vacate the room. Half of the school has been condemned. But there's no money for that little girl and her classmates. We just can't afford it. But let me tell you what we could afford. Stuck somewhere in the 4,000 pages, deep in the bowels of that carcass, are lucrative Subpart F Active Financing Provisions. This means $495 million of revenue loss to our Government, and an enormous tax windfall to a select group of large multinational financial service businesses. It says to them, in effect, that we provide an incentive in our Tax Code for them to take their businesses--and the jobs they provide--overseas. This bill not only extends this misguided incentive for one additional year at a cost of $260 million; it also makes matters worse by expanding it by another $235 million, despite strong opposition from the Treasury Department. It is now a $495 million gift to say to the financial services industry of this country: Move overseas, hire foreign workers, take your business and jobs elsewhere and we will give you a large tax cut for doing it. What a terrible thing to do, at a time when we don't have money to do the important things here. We are told, gee, there is plenty of money for somebody to slip somewhere in the middle of those 4,000 pages for a special little deal for some very big taxpayers who want to do business elsewhere and get paid for it. Bob Wills of the Texas Playboys talked about this in the 1930s: ``The little bee sucks the blossom and the big bee gets the honey; the little guy picks the cotton and the big guy gets the money.'' Why is it that every time you turn around here and reach into 4,000 pages, you find something like this? This is just one example. You talk about absurdity at a time when we're told that our priorities aren't affordable. You can't invest in the Cannonball or Ojibwa School; there's not enough money. But there is plenty of money for the big shots. Let me talk for just a minute about how we got to this point. The Senator from Idaho talked about it at some length. While I disagree with some of his conclusions, I think most people would view this process--coming to the end stage of this Congress with 4,000 pages to be voted on in one vote, with a third of the Federal budget appropriated in one large piece of legislation--as a terrible legislative practice. Does anybody think that makes sense? Instead of passing the bills as they should be passed by Congress, where they can be debated and amended, you put them all in a big package at the end so that you just have one vote. It is just a lot more convenient. That way you don't have to amend and debate all these things. Does anybody think that is a good idea? I don't. I think it is a terrible idea. How did this start? On April 15, the law requires that Congress pass a budget. That is what the law requires. It says Congress must pass a budget. This Congress said, no, we have decided not to pass a budget. We have a bunch of folks that are feuding, so we will decide not to pass a budget at all. Then they decided that because we can't agree on a budget, we just won't pass all of our appropriations bills. So they stagger to the end of the 105th Congress, having no budget, few completed appropriations bills, and they create this 4,000-page mountain. Then you have a bunch of folks who say: If there is going to be a pile here, let me stick something in the pile. So the pile grows. And here we are. I don't happen to think that this is just one party's fault. I agree with the Senator from Idaho on that point, although I reject his implication that somehow the Democratic Members were hindering the business of the Senate and therefore, cloture motions had to be filed. That is not true at all. In fact, I can tell you example after example after example when a bill is brought to the floor, and before there is any debate--and certainly before there are any amendments--cloture motions are filed at the desk to say, ``No, we haven't had any amendments yet, but we want to foreclose amendments; we want to shut off debate.'' What kind of practice is that? That doesn't make any sense. That is impeding work of the Senate. That is saying we want to have a legislative body in which there is supposed to be debate, and we want to cut off debate. We don't want debate. We don't want you to offer your amendments. We think our legislation is so good that no one can improve it, and, by the way, you have no right to offer amendments. That is what these cloture motions are about. With respect to the question of where we are and the balanced budget that was mentioned by one of the previous speakers, there is no question that both parties contributed to a better fiscal policy. But it started in 1993 with a piece of legislation proposed by this President that was unpopular. I voted for it. The easiest thing would have been to vote no. It passed by one vote here in the Senate and one vote in the House and became law. It began the long trail towards stable fiscal policy and getting rid of the Federal budget deficit. When we cast that vote, the expectation that year was a $290 billion Federal budget deficit; completely out of balance. We were told by some on the other side of the aisle, if you do this, you are going to wreck this country's economy; if you do this, you are going to throw this country into a recession; if you do this, you will kill jobs. You will throw this country into a depression, we were told. Well, we did it, because the American people understood the fiscal policy we were on. They understood that the road we were traveling was destructive to this country's interest. They wanted us to make the tough choices. And we did. Guess what? We have wrestled that budget deficit to the ground. We now have a budget that is very close to being in balance. We now have an economy that is growing. Inflation is almost gone. Home ownership is the highest in 30 years. Unemployment is down, down--way down. Things are better in this country. Starting in 1993, when the American people saw that Congress was willing to make tough choices, we did it alone. There was not one vote from the other side of the aisle. But I will say this: The Republican Party has helped after that 1993 vote. They also provided some assistance with a fiscal policy that is better for this country, and we ought to have more of that. We ought to have more bipartisanship and more cooperation to do the right things for this country's future. The difference is, it seems to me, that a product of debate ought not be about aggregate fiscal policy, but rather about priorities. What represents the priorities for our country's future? What should we do that is important? Again, I think where I would disagree with some previous speakers is that doing nothing ought not be a badge of honor when the agenda of this country cries out to do something to address critical needs. We should have done something on managed care reform. We should have said to HMOs in this country, you must tell patients all of their medical options for treatment--not just the cheapest. You must do that. You must provide reimbursement for emergency care when someone shows up at an emergency room. I told the story--there are stories that go on forever--of a woman who broke her neck, comes to an emergency room unconscious, and is told later, ``We will not reimburse you for the emergency room stay because you didn't have prior approval.'' Those are the kinds of things that have been going on in managed care in the name of saving money, but actually degrade and diminish health care standards. This Congress certainly should have addressed this issue. Doing nothing is not a badge of honor on this issue of managed care reform. Certainly, it is not a badge of honor that we weren't able to pass FAA reform. We should have done that. That piece of legislation included an amendment of mine that would have substantially changed the way the major airlines have to connect with regional jet carriers. And we would have more regional jet carriers in this country, more competition and lower prices for airfares had we passed that piece of legislation. I regret that it was not done. Let me also mention the issue of family farmers and the farm crisis in our part of the country. I know there is a difference of philosophy about this. But there ought not be. If this country wants family farmers in its future, it ought to decide that when prices collapse it is going to have to help build a bridge across those price valleys, because, if not, the family farmers won't get across the valley. They will just wash out and be gone. And we will have corporate farmers farming America from the west coast to the east coast, and we will still have crops growing. There will just be no people living out on the land. And this country will have lost something important. We did something at the end of this session. We reached some bipartisan agreement on an emergency package. But it wasn't enough. It was nearly $2 billion short of what the President requested, nearly $3 billion short of what the commissioners of agriculture and the Farm Belt said was necessary to address this farm crisis. We will be right back in this set of circumstances in January, February and March as farmers begin to consider spring planting. With respect to the agriculture package, we did get nearly $1 3/4 billion more because we fought and because we did accept the admonition of some to take what they are willing to give you and quit. There was $100 million more for the family farmers of my State. Is that important? Yes. Some will survive. Some who would not have survived without it will survive to be able to continue farming in the future. I have mentioned a couple of times the letter from a young boy named Wyatt in North Dakota, a sophomore in high school, the son of a family farmer who wrote to me, and said, ``Mr. Senator, my dad can feed 180 people, and he can't feed his family.'' This young boy wanted to know what kind of a system allows that to happen. This country needs to do better by family farmers. I was impressed that we could work together on a bipartisan basis toward the end of this session. I hope we can do the same at the start of the next session to address many of these issues. Let me complete my comments. There are so many issues in this omnibus appropriations bill. One of them is an issue that I have worked on with the Senator from Alaska, Senator Stevens, and Senator Byrd, that will create a trade deficit review commission. The reason I mention this is because today the new trade deficit numbers were released for this month. It shows a $2 billion increase, the largest trade deficit in the history of this country, the largest trade deficit in the history of human kind. We have wrestled the fiscal policy budget deficit to the ground, and our trade deficit is swelling and growing, and we need to do something about it. This omnibus package will include a requirement that a trade deficit review commission be established, and that recommendations will be made to Congress on how to deal with those issues. I hope the Congress will be able to take some steps early in the next session of Congress to respond to that issue. Mr. President, let me conclude by saying that I hope we will never again be confronted with this circumstance at the end of a Congress. I understand that at the end of Congress there is wrap-up. Sometimes a bill or two doesn't get passed. Sometimes you wrap one or two bills into a package. But this is not a good way to legislate. It is, in my judgment, subverting the legislative process--the regular order of bringing bills to the floor so we have open debate and amendments, when at the end all of these things are put into one large package, and we are told to just read it, think about it, and then vote on it. I don't think that is the best that this Congress can offer the American people. I hope this will be the last chapter of this kind of congressional action, or lack of it. Mr. President, finally, the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee is on the floor. I thank him for his work. I have not been complimentary of the process, but I know Senator Stevens and Senator Byrd and their staffs, and many others, have spent an enormous amount of time trying to put this package together simply because the Congress did not get its work done during the year. I compliment them for their work to try to do that. I know, especially from a staff standpoint, what kind of effort and time was required to get this to this point. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. STEVENS addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to help bring much-needed regional jet service to underserved communities. This legislation is designed to help restore air service to underserved communities and to stimulate airline competition by offering an investment tax credit to new entrant carriers to provide regional jet service to underserved markets. My bill also significantly reduces the current airline ticket tax on passengers flying in and out of rural America. Together, these tax incentives will encourage new entrants to enter thinner rural markets. This legislation has two objectives: (A) incentivize the purchase and deployment of regional jets for under-served markets; and (B) stimulate competition in rural areas by providing financial incentives for new entrants to serve underserved markets with regional jets. Using tax credits is a fair and effective means to accomplish these goals. Most small communities have not benefitted from airline deregulation. In fact, airline deregulation has been a steady decline for much of rural America. Since 1978, when the Congress deregulated the airline industry, more than 30 small communities have had jet service replaced with turbo prop service; out of the 320 small communities served by a major airline in 1978 declined from 213 to 33 by 1995; and the number of small communities receiving service to only one major hub airport nearly doubled, increasing from 79 in 1978 to 174 in 1995. Countless studies from the General Accounting Office and the U.S. Department of Transportation have documented that as the airline industry grows more and more concentrated under deregulation, small rural communities are being left behind with less service and higher fares. Several GAO studies have pointed to the correlation between industry concentration and higher air fares and that small rural communities are being hit especially hard as a result of the chilling of competition in the industry. In 1990, the GAO identified several market barriers thwarting the emergence of competition. In 1996, the GAO found that not only do the same problems continue to exist, but have gotten worse. In the present deregulated environment, small rural communities see very little to give them hope that air service will improve. The advent of regional jets holds some promise, but most RJs are presently being purchased by the major carriers who are using them to serve high density markets. Thus, if air service to rural America is going to be revitalized, we must find a way to incentivize the deployment of regional jets in underserved markets. Last August, Northwest Airlines had a pilot strike and therefore a shutdown of their airline service. That might not have meant much to some. In some airports, Northwest was one of a number of carriers that was serving certain airports and serving passengers. But in North Dakota, the State which I represent, Northwest Airlines was the only airline providing jet service to my State. That is a very different picture than the last time we had an airline strike, which was over 25 years ago. Nearly a quarter of a century ago when Northwest had another strike and a shutdown prior to deregulation of the airlines, we had five different airline companies flying jets into the State of North Dakota. At roughly the same time, we had folks in Congress saying: ``What we really need to do is foster competition. We need to deregulate the airline industry.'' Thus, Congress deregulated the airline industry about 20 years ago. I wasn't here at the time, but the results for North Dakota was that we went from five jet carriers to one and we pay some of the highest fares of anywhere in the country. All those folks who swallowed the goal to deregulation in order to stimulate competition are now choking on the word ``competition.'' Today, stimulating competition is likened to re-regulation. What a twist. But, the fact is that competition is more the exception than the rule. If you live in Chicago and you are flying to New York or Los Angeles, God bless you, because you are going to have a lot of carriers to choose from and you are going to find very inexpensive ticket prices. You have a choice of carriers and ticket prices that are very attractive to you. You live in a city with millions and millions of people and you want to fly to another city with millions and millions of people. This is not an awfully bad deal for you; more choices and low fares. But if you get beyond those cities and ask how has this airline deregulation affected other Americans, what you will find is less selection, fewer choices, and higher prices. North Dakota is just one example, and the recent shutdown of our state's only jet carrier highlighted the problem. When the strike was called and the airline shut down, just like that, an entire State lost all of its jet service. A complete shutdown of all jet service chokes the economy very quickly. People can't move in and out. Now, I happen to think Northwest is a good carrier. I believe the same about all the major carriers. Most of them are well-run, good companies. What I do not admire is what they have done by retreating into regional monopolies--dominating the access points of our Nation's air transportation system. The major carriers have retreated into fortress hubs where one airline controls 60 or 70 or 80 percent of all the traffic at a major hub airport. With that level of market dominance, does anyone believe that another carrier is going to be able to come in and take them on? Competition is not flourishing. It's dying. This is not a free market--new entrants cannot access these dominated hubs and the result is that we now have regional monopolies without any regulation. What sense does that make, to have monopolies without regulation? The minute I say ``regulation,'' we have people here having apoplectic seizures on the floor of the Senate. Oh, Lord, we cannot talk about ``regulation!'' I am not standing here today talking about regulation and I am not suggesting to re-regulate the airlines. All I want to do is see if we can provide some sort of industrial-strength vitamin B-12 shot right in the rump of those airlines to see if we cannot get them competing again. How do we do that? We do it by creating the conditions that require competition. This legislation is one attempt to do just that. In order to encourage new startup regional jet service, I am proposing a 10 percent investment tax credit for regional jet purchases. That is, those startup companies that want to begin regional jet service to fly these new regional jets between certain cities and hubs that are not now served with regional jet service, we would say to them that we will help with a 10 percent investment tax credit on the purchase or lease of those regional jets. We will help because we want to provide incentives for the establishment of regional jet service once again in our country. Under this legislation, qualifying carriers would be eligible for an investment tax credit--up to ten percent of the purchase or lease price--of regional jet aircraft that are used primarily to serve under- served markets. To receive the investment tax credit, an air carrier must have less than $10 billion annual revenue passenger miles and the aircraft for which the tax credit applies must be used primarily (over 50% of its flight segments) to serve underserved markets for 5 years. An under-served market is defined as a community served by an airport with fewer than 60,000 annual emplanements. The investment tax credit would be offset by closing a corporate tax loophole regarding the deductible liquidating distributions or regulated investment companies and real estate investment trusts. The remaining revenue available from the offset would be used to reduce the airline ticket tax for the domestic segment serving a rural airport. Under current law, an 8 percent ad velorem tax is imposed on all domestic flights, plus a $2 flight segment tax. Beginning in fiscal year 1999, the ad velorem tax is reduced to 7.5 percent and the flight segment tax is increased to $2.25. In subsequent years, the ad velorem tax remains at 7.5 percent while the flight segment tax increases $0.25 per year through 2003 at which point is capped at $3.00 per flight segment. Current law provides that the flight segment tax is not imposed on domestic flights to and from rural airports, which are defined as an airport with fewer than 100,000 passenger departures and is not located within 75 miles of another airport (that has fewer than 100,000 passenger departures) or is receiving EAS subsidies. Under this legislation, the 7.5 percent ad velorem tax on domestic flights to rural airports would be reduced in proportion to the amount remaining from the revenue offset after the regional jet aircraft investment tax credit has been provided. It is targeted, it makes good sense, and it will stimulate investment in an activity that this country that very much needs more competition. The so-called free market is clogged--a kind of an airline cholesterol here that clogs up the arteries, and they say, ``This is the way we work, these are our hubs, these are out spokes, and you cannot mess with them.'' My legislation simply says we would like to assist areas that no longer have jet service but could support it. We would like to encourage companies that decide they want to come in and serve there to be able to purchase the regional jets and be able to initiate that kind of service. My legislation has a second provision which reduces the airline ticket tax for certain qualified flights in rural America. This proposal also has a revenue offset so it would not be a net loser for the Federal budget. We are not in a situation in rural areas of this country where we can just sit back and say what is going to happen to us is going to happen to us and there is nothing we can do about it. There are some, I suppose, who sit around and wring their hands and gnash their teeth and fret and sweat and say, ``I really cannot alter things very much, this is the way it is.'' The way it is not satisfactory to the people of my State. It is not satisfactory to have only one jet carrier serving our entire State. Our State's transportation services and airline service, especially jet airline service, is an essential transportation service. It ought not be held hostage by labor problems or other problems of one jet carrier. We must have competition. If all of those in this Chamber who mean what they say when they talk about competition will weigh in here and say, ``Let's stand for competition, let's stand for the free market, let's try to help new starts, let's breed opportunities for broader based economic ownership and more competition in the airline industry,'' then I think we will have done something important and useful and good for States like mine and for many other rural States in this country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today I am introducing legislation to help bring much-needed regional jet service to underserved communities. This legislation is designed to help restore air service to underserved communities and to stimulate airline competition by offering an investment tax credit to new entrant carriers to provide regional jet service to underserved markets. My bill also significantly reduces the current airline ticket tax on passengers flying in and out of rural America. Together, these tax incentives will encourage new entrants to enter thinner rural markets. This legislation has two objectives: (A) incentivize the purchase and deployment of regional jets for under-served markets; and (B) stimulate competition in rural areas by providing financial incentives for new entrants to serve underserved markets with regional jets. Using tax credits is a fair and effective means to accomplish these goals. Most small communities have not benefitted from airline deregulation. In fact, airline deregulation has been a steady decline for much of rural America. Since 1978, when the Congress deregulated the airline industry, more than 30 small communities have had jet service replaced with turbo prop service; out of the 320 small communities served by a major airline in 1978 declined from 213 to 33 by 1995; and the number of small communities receiving service to only one major hub airport nearly doubled, increasing from 79 in 1978 to 174 in 1995. Countless studies from the General Accounting Office and the U.S. Department of Transportation have documented that as the airline industry grows more and more concentrated under deregulation, small rural communities are being left behind with less service and higher fares. Several GAO studies have pointed to the correlation between industry concentration and higher air fares and that small rural communities are being hit especially hard as a result of the chilling of competition in the industry. In 1990, the GAO identified several market barriers thwarting the emergence of competition. In 1996, the GAO found that not only do the same problems continue to exist, but have gotten worse. In the present deregulated environment, small rural communities see very little to give them hope that air service will improve. The advent of regional jets holds some promise, but most RJs are presently being purchased by the major carriers who are using them to serve high density markets. Thus, if air service to rural America is going to be revitalized, we must find a way to incentivize the deployment of regional jets in underserved markets. Last August, Northwest Airlines had a pilot strike and therefore a shutdown of their airline service. That might not have meant much to some. In some airports, Northwest was one of a number of carriers that was serving certain airports and serving passengers. But in North Dakota, the State which I represent, Northwest Airlines was the only airline providing jet service to my State. That is a very different picture than the last time we had an airline strike, which was over 25 years ago. Nearly a quarter of a century ago when Northwest had another strike and a shutdown prior to deregulation of the airlines, we had five different airline companies flying jets into the State of North Dakota. At roughly the same time, we had folks in Congress saying: ``What we really need to do is foster competition. We need to deregulate the airline industry.'' Thus, Congress deregulated the airline industry about 20 years ago. I wasn't here at the time, but the results for North Dakota was that we went from five jet carriers to one and we pay some of the highest fares of anywhere in the country. All those folks who swallowed the goal to deregulation in order to stimulate competition are now choking on the word ``competition.'' Today, stimulating competition is likened to re-regulation. What a twist. But, the fact is that competition is more the exception than the rule. If you live in Chicago and you are flying to New York or Los Angeles, God bless you, because you are going to have a lot of carriers to choose from and you are going to find very inexpensive ticket prices. You have a choice of carriers and ticket prices that are very attractive to you. You live in a city with millions and millions of people and you want to fly to another city with millions and millions of people. This is not an awfully bad deal for you; more choices and low fares. But if you get beyond those cities and ask how has this airline deregulation affected other Americans, what you will find is less selection, fewer choices, and higher prices. North Dakota is just one example, and the recent shutdown of our state's only jet carrier highlighted the problem. When the strike was called and the airline shut down, just like that, an entire State lost all of its jet service. A complete shutdown of all jet service chokes the economy very quickly. People can't move in and out. Now, I happen to think Northwest is a good carrier. I believe the same about all the major carriers. Most of them are well-run, good companies. What I do not admire is what they have done by retreating into regional monopolies--dominating the access points of our Nation's air transportation system. The major carriers have retreated into fortress hubs where one airline controls 60 or 70 or 80 percent of all the traffic at a major hub airport. With that level of market dominance, does anyone believe that another carrier is going to be able to come in and take them on? Competition is not flourishing. It's dying. This is not a free market--new entrants cannot access these dominated hubs and the result is that we now have regional monopolies without any regulation. What sense does that make, to have monopolies without regulation? The minute I say ``regulation,'' we have people here having apoplectic seizures on the floor of the Senate. Oh, Lord, we cannot talk about ``regulation!'' I am not standing here today talking about regulation and I am not suggesting to re-regulate the airlines. All I want to do is see if we can provide some sort of industrial-strength vitamin B-12 shot right in the rump of those airlines to see if we cannot get them competing again. How do we do that? We do it by creating the conditions that require competition. This legislation is one attempt to do just that. In order to encourage new startup regional jet service, I am proposing a 10 percent investment tax credit for regional jet purchases. That is, those startup companies that want to begin regional jet service to fly these new regional jets between certain cities and hubs that are not now served with regional jet service, we would say to them that we will help with a 10 percent investment tax credit on the purchase or lease of those regional jets. We will help because we want to provide incentives for the establishment of regional jet service once again in our country. Under this legislation, qualifying carriers would be eligible for an investment tax credit--up to ten percent of the purchase or lease price--of regional jet aircraft that are used primarily to serve under- served markets. To receive the investment tax credit, an air carrier must have less than $10 billion annual revenue passenger miles and the aircraft for which the tax credit applies must be used primarily (over 50% of its flight segments) to serve underserved markets for 5 years. An under-served market is defined as a community served by an airport with fewer than 60,000 annual emplanements. The investment tax credit would be offset by closing a corporate tax loophole regarding the deductible liquidating distributions or regulated investment companies and real estate investment trusts. The remaining revenue available from the offset would be used to reduce the airline ticket tax for the domestic segment serving a rural airport. Under current law, an 8 percent ad velorem tax is imposed on all domestic flights, plus a $2 flight segment tax. Beginning in fiscal year 1999, the ad velorem tax is reduced to 7.5 percent and the flight segment tax is increased to $2.25. In subsequent years, the ad velorem tax remains at 7.5 percent while the flight segment tax increases $0.25 per year through 2003 at which point is capped at $3.00 per flight segment. Current law provides that the flight segment tax is not imposed on domestic flights to and from rural airports, which are defined as an airport with fewer than 100,000 passenger departures and is not located within 75 miles of another airport (that has fewer than 100,000 passenger departures) or is receiving EAS subsidies. Under this legislation, the 7.5 percent ad velorem tax on domestic flights to rural airports would be reduced in proportion to the amount remaining from the revenue offset after the regional jet aircraft investment tax credit has been provided. It is targeted, it makes good sense, and it will stimulate investment in an activity that this country that very much needs more competition. The so-called free market is clogged--a kind of an airline cholesterol here that clogs up the arteries, and they say, ``This is the way we work, these are our hubs, these are out spokes, and you cannot mess with them.'' My legislation simply says we would like to assist areas that no longer have jet service but could support it. We would like to encourage companies that decide they want to come in and serve there to be able to purchase the regional jets and be able to initiate that kind of service. My legislation has a second provision which reduces the airline ticket tax for certain qualified flights in rural America. This proposal also has a revenue offset so it would not be a net loser for the Federal budget. We are not in a situation in rural areas of this country where we can just sit back and say what is going to happen to us is going to happen to us and there is nothing we can do about it. There are some, I suppose, who sit around and wring their hands and gnash their teeth and fret and sweat and say, ``I really cannot alter things very much, this is the way it is.'' The way it is not satisfactory to the people of my State. It is not satisfactory to have only one jet carrier serving our entire State. Our State's transportation services and airline service, especially jet airline service, is an essential transportation service. It ought not be held hostage by labor problems or other problems of one jet carrier. We must have competition. If all of those in this Chamber who mean what they say when they talk about competition will weigh in here and say, ``Let's stand for competition, let's stand for the free market, let's try to help new starts, let's breed opportunities for broader based economic ownership and more competition in the airline industry,'' then I think we will have done something important and useful and good for States like mine and for many other rural States in this country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of this bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, the Senator from Illinois is waiting to speak. I, by consent, am waiting to speak as well. That brings it to 30 minutes the total requested by the Senator from Texas?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, am I correct in assuming I am recognized under the previous unanimous consent order?

Mr. DORGAN. I have no objection. I thought he asked for 25 additional minutes. I have no objection to 5 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. I thought I heard the Senator request 25 additional minutes.

Mr. DORGAN. Will that bring to 30 minutes the time requested by the Senator from Texas?

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I did want to say, having listened to the Senator from Kentucky, my expectation is that virtually every Member of this Senate, Republican and Democrat alike, shares my feelings about the Senator from Kentucky. He is tough, he is honest, he gets things done in the Senate, and we are going to miss him a great deal. I know the Senator from Montana feels that way, as does the Senator from Texas. Some of our other colleagues are not here. But one of the privileges of serving in this body is serving with some of the best men and women I have ever had the opportunity to work with in my life, and I count among that group the Senator from Kentucky, Senator Ford. I would like to say, as he leaves the Senate, I thank him for his public service to our country. He, because he served in this body, has contributed to the well-being of America. We are going to miss him a great deal. I expect he will not be going far. I know he is going fishing, and I know he is going to be involved in public service in his own way, dealing with educating young people about civic responsibilities and about government. I just want to say he has contributed a substantial amount of service to his country and we are deeply indebted to him for it.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I wonder if I might ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 minute.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, will the Senator from Kentucky yield for a moment.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator from Texas. He is always interesting in his presentations. During my presentation, I will take issue with a number of the comments he has made. At the start, I want to indicate it is not, in my judgment, the case that this issue of education has just recently been raised in recent days. The last few days, certainly, have included a lot of references to education by the President and by others, but going back to January and February of this year, the President and Members of Congress on this side of the aisle were pushing very hard for education changes that we think would strengthen the school systems and strengthen opportunity for education for all children in this country. I want to speak more generally, first, and then I will address a couple of those issues. I am enormously disappointed that we come to the middle of October in this session of Congress, the 105th Congress, and find that at the end of this long, arduous Congress, we have half a dozen, maybe a dozen people somewhere in a room--Lord only knows where the room is--negotiating a third to half of the Federal budget in appropriations bills that the Congress didn't get completed. First of all, in this year, the Congress passed no budget. It is the first time, as I understand it, since 1974--no budget. The requirement is that the Congress shall pass a budget by April 15. This Congress didn't pass a budget. This Congress, by its inaction, said, no, we don't think there ought to be a budget. That is No. 1. No. 2, because the Congress didn't even bother to pass a budget, it didn't pass a good number of its appropriations bills. So we came to the end of the fiscal year, months after when the appropriations bills should have been completed, many months after the budget should have been passed, and the Congress had to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government operating. Then we have this closed-door bunch of folks in a room making deals on how to resolve these final issues. During this Congress, at a time when no budget was enacted and a good many appropriations bills were not completed, the Congress said no to campaign finance reform, not once, not twice, a good number of times. No, we don't want to do campaign finance reform. They said, no, we don't want to do HMO or a Patients' Bill of Rights reforming the managed care system and providing certain rights to patients in this country. They said no to tobacco reform, don't want to do that; no to the education proposals offered in the President's budget calling for reduction in class size. Incidentally, I take issue with the charts used moments ago, and I guess most parents who have kids in school will take issue with that chart, suggesting somehow that classroom sizes are decreasing rather than increasing. I think most parents understand that is not the case in their schools. It is not unusual for kids to be going to school with 22, 24, 28, 30 children in their class. The question is, Does that make a difference? Does it make a difference for a teacher when there are 15 in the class versus 30 in the class? Does it make a difference in terms of the personal attention a teacher can devote to children with 30 kids in a class versus 15 to 18? The answer is, of course. This Congress, in passing no budget and missing most of its appropriations bill, said no to campaign finance reform, no to tobacco, no to Patients' Bill of Rights, no to the education proposal offered by the President on school construction and reduction in class size. In the old western movies you will recall the folks that rode themselves into a box canyon, took their hat off and scratched their heads wondering why they were being attacked on all sides. Because they road into a boxed canyon is why they are under attack. That is exactly what happened in this Congress. Is it surprising that a Congress that doesn't pass a budget and doesn't finish its appropriations bills finds itself today, on Monday, October 12, in a situation where we are scrambling, trying to figure out who is doing what with whom, to determine what kind of spending we have in dozens and dozens and dozens of areas? Does it surprise anybody we have this kind of a mess at the end of this session? I don't think so. The previous speaker just spoke of a robbery. He used the term ``robbery'' to describe the amount of money that some are proposing to be offered to deal with certain education issues. I personally think it is a significant and exciting and wonderful investment in the young children of our country to invest in education. That is not a robbery. That is a remarkably effective investment for this country. Investment in health care is not a robbery. That is a remarkable investment for the people of this country. How about for family farmers? Part of this debate is what we do for family farmers in the middle of a farm crisis. No one should think that would be a robbery, to take some funds during the middle of a farm crisis and say to family farmers when prices collapse and you are down and out, we want to give you a helping hand to help you up and help get you through this tough time. That is the issue here. The issue is what are our priorities? Let me give an example of a robbery. Yes, there are robberies taking place. I understand there is a tax extender bill that some in Congress are trying to slip in, another $500 million little tax incentive for some of the biggest economic interests to move their jobs overseas, make it a little sweeter deal. We have a perverse incentive in our Tax Code to say if you want to move American jobs overseas, we will pay you for it, we will give you a tax break. Just take those good old American jobs, shut your plants, move them overseas, and we will give you a tax break. Talk about perversity. We have people working to try to juice that up, increase the tax break. That is a robbery. It robs America of jobs it needs, it robs us of the revenue we ought to have to invest in kids and invest in health care. The point is, priorities. What are our priorities? What do we think is important? At the start of this century, if you lived in America you were expected to live an average of 48 years of age. Almost 100 years have elapsed and now if you live in this country you are expected, perhaps, to live to be 78. Forty-eight to 78--30 years added to the lifespan of the average American. Is that success? Yes, I think so. You could solve all the Social Security problems and all the Medicare problems, all the financing of those issues could be solved if you simply take the life expectancy back to the 1940s or the 1920s or the 1900s. However, for a range of reasons, life expectancy has increased dramatically in our country in one century. We have invested an enormous amount in health care research, National Institutes of Health. I am one, and some of my colleagues have joined me, who wants to increase the investment in health research. We know 50 years ago if someone had a bad heart, bad knee, bad hip or cataracts, they wouldn't be able to see, they wouldn't be able to walk, and they would probably die after a heart attack. Now they have knee surgery, get a new hip, get their heart muscle and arteries unplugged, have cataract surgery, and they come to a meeting in that small town and feel like a million dollars. All of that is possible because of research, an expenditure in health care in this country. It is remarkable. It has been remarkably effective. The same is true with education. My colleague from Illinois is going to follow me on the floor. He will remember--and I have told my colleagues this on previous occasions--he will remember Claude Pepper, who served with us in the U.S. House. The first time I went to Claude Pepper's office, I saw two pictures behind his chair. One was Orville and Wilbur Wright making the first airplane flight; it was autographed to Claude Pepper. Orville autographed the picture before he died. And then a photograph of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon, and that photograph was autographed to Congressman Pepper. I thought, what is the interval between leaving the ground to fly, and flying to the moon? What is that interval? It is the most remarkable investment in human potential and in education compared to anywhere else on Earth. All of the kids that went to our school, that became the best scientists, the best engineers, the best at whatever they could be the best at, and we discovered we could develop the technology, through research, to learn how to fly, learn how to fly all the way to the moon. And standing on everyone's shoulders with accomplishment after accomplishment, we have now understood that virtually anything is possible. That comes from massive investment in education. That is what the interval in the two pictures told me--that investing in America's children in education has paid dividends far beyond our wildest imagination. That is why I come here today. Let me make one additional point with respect to family farmers. I have talked about investment in health care and education. Investment in America's family farmers is also one of the best investments our country has ever made. We have the best food in the world for the lowest percent of disposable income anywhere on the Earth. Who produces that food? A lot of families living out there in the country, by themselves, taking risks that almost no one else takes--the risk that they might lose everything they have, this spring, this summer, this fall if a seed doesn't grow, or if a seed grows and is destroyed by nature, or if it grows and is not destroyed and they harvest it and take it to the elevator and it is worth nothing. These family farmers just inherit, by the nature of what they do, the most significant risk you can imagine. That is why this country, for 60 or 70 years, has said we want to try to help farmers when we have these price depressions, we want to build a bridge to help them over the price valleys. That is what this fight has been about in recent days here in Congress. That is what the President's veto is about--about trying to get this country to say, during a time of severe crisis in family farming, during a time of abject price collapse, where the price of wheat has gone down 60 percent in 2 years--our farmers in North Dakota have lost 98 percent of their income in 1 year alone. Ask yourself, in any city, on any block, any occupation, what would happen to you if you lost 98 percent of your income? Would you be in a severe crisis? Despite that, what do we do about that? Can we extend a helping hand? Can we say, during these tough times, that we want to help you over this valley because we want you in our future? Family farmers matter to this country. If we lose family farmers, we will have lost something about ourselves that is very important--broad- based economic ownership, with families living on the land and producing America's foodstuffs. That is what the fight is about. I am not saying one side is all right and the other side is all wrong. But I am saying to those who say that farmers aren't worth it at this point, just let them float in some mythical free market, that we just don't have the money, or those who perhaps would say if you use the money to save family farmers, it is ``robbery''--I don't understand that. This, after all, is about priorities. What are our priorities? What is important to us? A hundred years from now, everybody in this room will likely be dead. The only way anybody might determine about our value system as a people is to look at how we chose to spend our resources. What did we think was important? Education? Family farmers? Did we think it was important to deal with health care? What were our priorities? President Clinton, at the start of this year, asked for the education priorities dealing with school construction and class size. He asked, at the start of this year, to deal with health care issues--Medicare, managed care, and the Patients' Bill of Rights. He asked, at the start of this year, for a tobacco reform bill. He asked, at the start of this year, for campaign finance reform. Sadly, we now come to the 12th hour and we have a bunch of folks sitting in a room somewhere trying to negotiate probably a third of the Federal budget, or a third of the Federal spending, by themselves. I just think that is a terrible way for Congress to conduct its affairs. My hope is that when all of these fights are done and the dust has settled, we will have achieved a result that says the priorities for us at this point are to try to save family farmers during a time of crisis, the priorities for us are to invest in our kids and our schools, and the priorities for us are to decide that, in the future, we ought to do our work in Congress the way the law describes. Let's pass a budget, pass some bills, do the regular order, and not end up another session the way this session appears to be ending. Mr. President, I know that the Senator from Illinois is waiting to speak. Let me also say, as I conclude, that the Senator from Illinois has been very active on the issue of tobacco legislation, as well as education issues. I think he has been a remarkably effective addition to the U.S. Senate. It has been my pleasure to serve with him in the 105th Congress. I yield the floor. Mr. DURBIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Would the Senator be willing to add me for 15 minutes on Monday?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I shall not object, I would like to inquire of the Senator from Mississippi, is that the only morning business leadership would intend to have on Monday? I would like to have 15 minutes in morning business on Monday as well.

Mr. DORGAN

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

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

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

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to respond briefly to the comments made by the majority leader earlier this morning on the subject of education. I have great respect for our Senate majority leader. He and I agree on some things and disagree on others, but I always have great respect for his opinion. But on the issue of schools and what kind of, if any, involvement the Federal Government shall have on this issue, I think we have a very substantial disagreement. State and local governments, especially local school boards, will always run our school system, and that is how it should be. I don't suggest, and would never suggest, that we change that. However, there are some things that we can and should aspire to as a nation in dealing with education. One is to improve and invest in the infrastructure of our schools. I have spoken on the floor a good number of times about the condition of some of the schools in this country. I won't go into that at great length, but let me just describe a couple of them. At the Cannon Ball Elementary School in Cannon Ball, ND, most of the children going to that school are Indian children. There are about 150 students who must share only two bathrooms and one water fountain. Part of the school has been condemned. Some of those students spend time in a room down in the older part of the school that can only be used during certain days of the week because the stench of leaking sewer gas frequently fills that room with noxious fumes that requires it to be evacuated. They can't connect that school to the Internet because the wiring in that 90-year-old facility will not support technology. The young children who go through those schoolroom doors are not getting the best of what this country has to offer. And that school district simply does not have the funds on its own to repair that school or build a new one. I challenge anyone in this Congress to go into that school building and say no to young Rosie in third grade who asked me, ``Mr. Senator, can you buy us a new school?'' I would challenge anyone to go into that school, and decide whether that is the kind of school you want your children to go to. Can you say that your children are entering a classroom that you are proud of? I don't think so. That school district doesn't have the capacity to repair that school on its own. It has a very small tax base that will not support a bonding initiative for building a new school. There are schools like that--the Cannon Ball Elementary School, or the Ojibwa Indian School on the Turtle Mountain Reservation--all over this country, and we ought to do something about it. We can do something about it we enacted a number of proposals on school construction. That ought to be a priority for this Senate. So, too, ought this Senate have as its priority trying to help State and local governments and school districts reduce class size. It makes a difference. I have two children in public schools, in grade school. One goes to school in a trailer, a portable classroom. The other is in a class with 28 or 29 students. And it has almost always been that way. Would it be better if they were in schools with class sizes of 15, 16 or 18 students? Of course, it would. Does a teacher have more time to devote to each student with smaller classrooms? Of course. Of course. Can we do something about that? Only if this U.S. Senate determines that education is a priority. Only if we decide to do something about it. I am not suggesting that we decide that we ought to run the local school systems; that is not the case at all. But we should decide that we as a nation have the capability and the will to modernize and help construct the kind of schools that all of us would be proud to send our children to.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I object.

Mr. DORGAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, as we reach the conclusion of this 105th Congress, I note that there are a good many issues yet to be discussed and resolved. I wanted to come to the floor to talk about one issue that is very important, the issue of home health care. It is vitally important that Congress take action on this issue before adjourning. I am very familiar with home health care. This is not theory to me. It is not an issue that I just read about and only understand from books and manuals and rules and regulations. One snowing Wednesday evening in January a number of years ago, my mother was killed in a tragic manslaughter incident in North Dakota. She had gone to the hospital to visit a friend and on her drive home, four blocks from home, a drunk driver going 80 to 100 miles an hour and being chased by the police hit her and killed her instantly. During this same period, my father was having significant health problems, and as so often is the case, my mother was providing the bulk of his care at home in Bismarck, ND. I will perhaps never forget the moment of having to wake my father up and tell him that my mother had lost her life. In addition to the shock of losing our mother, my family understood that we were also going to have to struggle to make sure my father got the care he needed. In the days ahead, we began talking about what we could do to help my father in his fragile state of health. One of the things we discovered was that there is in this country a system of home health care. Through this system, skilled health care providers will come into the home on a routine basis to help to meet the health care needs of those who desperately need it. My family used the home health care system and the services of wonderful nurses and others who worked in home health to care for my father. It allowed us to keep my father out of a nursing home and in the home that he had lived in for so many years with my mother. Was that important? Yes. It was very important and made life much, much better for him. And it occurred because we have a home health care system that could provide the routine health care needed to allow my father to continue to live at home. My father is gone now, but I still remember how important that home health care was and still is to millions of families all across this country. Home health care is a wonderful Medicare benefit because it allows older Americans to remain at home and to be independent where they are most comfortable, rather than having to go into more costly hospitals or nursing homes. But at this time, we have in our country a very serious financing problem with home health care that is jeopardizing this Medicare benefit. Before we end this session of the Congress, we need to do something to address it. I would like to describe just for a moment what that problem is. Congress, last year, passed the Balanced Budget Act, something I supported. This legislation made a lot of changes to Medicare and to the home health care program. Some of those changes were warranted because the home health care program had mushroomed, and we had to constrain the rate of growth of home health care spending, which had more than tripled in the early 1990s. But Congress went too far and, in my judgment, made a mistake in the way it implemented what is called the interim payment system, which is now having a devastating impact on home health care agencies and Medicare beneficiaries. The current interim payment system penalizes the very home health care agencies that have operated most efficiently in the past, and it locks in the payment inequities that currently exist. The result is that 1,100 home health agencies nationwide have closed their doors. Unfortunately, the very Medicare beneficiaries who are being harmed the most by this interim payment system that is so unfair are those Americans who need home health care the most. That is because, under this interim payment system, more than 80 percent of home health agencies will be paid a capped amount called the ``per-beneficiary limit.'' In my home State, the average per-beneficiary limit is $2,247, not nearly enough to cover the cost of care needed by the sickest and the most frail of Medicare beneficiaries. The home health care folks have a Hobson's choice. They can close their doors, or they can start a kind of cherry-picking with respect to those who need home health care service. In other words, they can choose to serve only the less ill or less sick Medicare beneficiaries whom they know will not exceed the per-beneficiary cap. I am told cherry-picking is not yet occurring in my home State. But I am afraid it is only a matter of time before home health agencies have no choice and begin to do that. I don't believe it was Congress' intention to cause efficient home health agencies to close or to stop caring for sicker patients, and I think it is imperative that this Congress solve this problem. In the negotiations on the budget, I hope very much that will happen. If we wait until next year, it is going to be too late. Hundreds of agencies will probably not be there and a good many of the sickest and the most frail health care beneficiaries who need home health care will not get it. I have cosponsored a bill introduced by Senator Collins and others, the Medicare Home Health Equity Act, that would make the home health payment system more fair to the historically efficient providers, and reduce the incentive for dropping sick patients. Let me emphasize again that the purpose is to make the home health care system more fair to the historically efficient home health care providers. There have been dozens of bills introduced to solve the problem, and to date more than two-thirds of the Senate from both political parties have cosponsored one or more of these bills, or have gone on record in support of efforts to address the problem. With nearly 70 Senators cosponsoring or supporting legislation of this type, I think we ought to, before Monday evening or whenever we adjourn, fix this home health care payment system. I know my colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee have been working to develop legislation that will at least deal with the most pressing problems in this interim payment system and to tide the home health agencies over until permanent changes can be implemented. One of the challenges they face is to do this in a fiscally responsible way that will not harm other areas of Medicare. It is also important, I think, not to be asking older Americans, especially those who have reached the age of declining income, to shoulder the cost for this change through a new copayment on home health services. I know that the Congress can meet this challenge if it decides this is a priority between now and perhaps Monday evening. Congress must, in my judgment, begin to select the right priorities. We seem to be at loggerheads here in negotiations between the House and the Senate, the Congress and the President, Democrats and Republicans. Between now and when we complete the final omnibus spending bill, we must make choices about what our priorities are, what is more important, and what is less important. I ask that we decide that dealing with the home health care payment system is more important. That it be one of the priorities. This is something we can do. It is not something that is terribly difficult. It is simply a choice that we will make--Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, all of us deciding together how we spend limited resources on nearly unlimited wants in this country. Mr. President, I know others wish to speak, and I would say to the majority leader that this will be an interesting couple of days. He, I am sure, will have a significant challenge working with all of us to try to figure out what the priorities will be in the closing hours of this session. It is my fervent hope that one of those priorities will be to address the interim payment system in home health care. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, S. 391, the Mississippi Sioux Judgment Fund Distribution Act is a bill intended to resolve a longstanding problem with respect to a judgment fund distribution to Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes in the Dakotas and Montana. The bill would distribute an additional 7.1 percent of the funds, plus accrued interest, awarded by the Indian Claims Commission in 1967 to the Sisseton and Wahpeton Mississippi Sioux Tribes. This legislation is cosponsored by Senators Baucus, Burns, Conrad, Daschle, and Johnson. In 1972, Congress enacted legislation that authorized the Secretary of the Interior to distribute 75 percent of the $5.9 million judgment award to the Devils Lake Sioux Tribe of North Dakota (now known as the Spirit Lake Tribe), the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota, and the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Council of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana. The remaining 25 percent was to be distributed to individuals who could trace their lineal ancestry to a member of the aboriginal Sisseton and Wahpeton Mississippi Sioux, the predecessor to the three modern-day tribal entities. The judgment was compensation for the 27 million acres of land taken from this aboriginal tribe in the 19th century. Congress made the decision to allocate 25 percent of the original judgment to the lineal descendants at the urging of the Department of the Interior. The Department, in 1972, felt that historical events warranted a departure from precedent which was to make awards to tribes and not to individuals. In fact, the 1967 Indian Claims Commission judgment awarded compensation only to the successor tribes to the aboriginal Sisseton and Wahpeton Mississippi Sioux tribe, not to individual lineal descendants. The three Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes received their respective shares of the judgment award by the mid-1970's. To date, though, the funds allocated for the lineal descendants have not been distributed. This has resulted in a situation where the accrued interest on the original principle of approximately $1.5 million has now grown to more than $15 million. If the 1,988 lineal descendants identified to date by the Department of the Interior receive the $15 million in per capita payments, they would receive more than 18 times what the 11,829 enrolled members received in the 1970's. Moreover, since these identified lineal descendants comprise only 14 percent of the total number of tribal and non-tribal member descendants, the 25 percent allocated for lineal descendants in the 1972 act would permit each lineal descendant to receive almost twice as much as did the enrolled tribal members who were compensated in the 1970's, not counting interest. In 1987, the three Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes filed suit in federal court to challenge the constitutionality of the lineal descendancy provisions of the 1972 Act. When this legislation failed, in 1997 the tribes filed a new suit in federal court challenging these provision on constitutional grounds. This second suit is currently on appeal. In 1992, Congress enacted legislation which authorized the Attorney- General to settle these cases on any terms agreed to by the parties involved. However, the Department of Justice has refused to proceed with any settlement negotiations and has taken the position that the 1992 law did not authorize the Department to settle these cases on any terms other than those laid out in the original 1972 act. While I believe that this interpretation flies in the face of congressional intent, the Department has been unwilling to pursue the issue. S. 391 represents a reasonable solution to this matter and a substantial compromise on the part of the tribes. In the past, the tribes have sought complete repeal of the lineal descendancy provisions of the 1972 act. In 1986, a bill was reported out by the Select Committee on Indian Affairs which would have achieved this goal. The Department of the Interior supported this bill, explaining in a letter to the then Chairman of the Select Committee: ``As a general rule, we believe that each distribution of the Indian judgment funds should benefit the aggrieved historic tribe for which the award was made. If the historic tribe is no longer in existence, we believe that judgment funds should be programmed, to the greatest extent possible, to the present-day successor tribe(s) to the historic tribe.'' In this Congress, the tribes supported legislation that would have retained the undistributed principal for the lineal descendants and distributed the accrued interest to the three tribes. S. 391, as originally introduced, adopted this approach. H.R. 976, an identical bill introduced in the House, passed last year. After the House acted on this legislation, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing last October on H.R. 976 and another hearing last July on an S. 391 substitute. The bill before us today is the product of exhaustive negotiations between the parties involved and the subject of frequent consultations between congressional staff and representatives of the Departments of Interior and Justice that occurred in the past 12 months. Every effort has been made to consider and accommodate the concerns of these Departments while making sure that the tribes receive an additional distribution of at least 7.1 percent of the judgment award. While I believe that this legislation is a fundamentally fair solution to a problem that has remained unsolved for 30 years and that would persist for many more years without congressional intervention, none of the parties is entirely satisfied with the legislation. The tribes accept the legislation for what it provides but continue to maintain that they have a constitutional right to all of the undistributed funds. Certain persons seeking lineal descendant status have alleged that this legislation deprives them of their property. Because it is in the best interests of the United States and the other parties to bring an end to this problem, the bill provides that if the lineal descendants do not challenge the constitutionality of the bill's distribution to the tribes within one year following enactment, they are barred from bringing such a challenge in the future. On the other hand, if the lineal descendants do bring a timely challenge to the tribal distribution, the bill provides that the tribes have a right to intervene to challenge the constitutionality of the distribution made to lineal descendants. This provision would enable a federal court to finally and conclusively determine on the merits the respective constitutional claims of these parties and permanently put to rest what has been an endless legal dispute. Even after these legal disputes are settled, the Department of the Interior will continue, pursuant to a federal court order, to identify new lineal descendants who did not receive adequate notice in the 1970's of their right to participate in the judgment distribution. I am concerned about the determination of eligibility to participate of any newly identified lineal descendants. The 1972 act requires that eligibility be based on an individual's ability to trace ancestry to a lineal ancestor who was a member of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Mississippi Sioux Tribe. In their litigation the tribes alleged that only 65 of the 1,988 identified lineal descendants met this requirement. The government did not contradict this allegation but argued that the issue was irrelevant because the 1972 act allows the Secretary to identify ancestors on 20th century rolls. S. 391 changes this provision of the 1972 act to require the use of rolls as contemporaneous as possible to the existence of the aboriginal Sisseton and Wahpeton Mississippi Sioux Tribe in order to assure, consistent with the 1972 act, that a specific lineal ancestor from that tribe can be identified. Finally, it bears reemphasizing that the reason for this legislation is to correct an injustice suffered by the three tribes as a result of the 1972 act. The tribes, not individuals, were wronged by the taking of 27 million acres of treaty-protected lands owned by their aboriginal predecessor. In my view, in 1972 no amount of the judgment awarded for the taking of these lands should have been allocated to lineal descendants. Allocations to lineal descendants from Indian Claims Commission judgments long ago became a discredited policy and were generally abandoned. However, since 26 years have passed since the enactment of the 1972 act, I believe that the lineal descendants should receive a portion of the judgment. S. 391 would distribute about 30% of the undistributed funds to the tribes and about 70% to the unaffiliated lineal descendants. This split of the undistributed funds would equalize the distribution between tribal lineal descendants and the non-tribal member class of lineal descendants. Capping the non-tribal member class at 600 persons more than the 1,988 already identified lineal descendants was the method the Committee adopted for calculating the percent of the undistributed funds to be allocated to lineal descendants regardless of the final identified number. The split is not an attempt to achieve perfect parity among all lineal descendants, both tribal members and non-tribal members. I recognize that there is some chance that the final identified number of lineal descendants may exceed 2,588. Whatever the final number may be, those lineal descendants will equally share the 70% allocation. However, the distribution split is justified because the tribes should be the primary beneficiaries of the judgment they won after 17 years of litigation before the Indian Claims Commission. They were under compensated in the 1972 act based on their numbers and it is important that these judgment funds, to the greatest extent possible, be used to support tribal government programs and services. Moreover, the split is based on actual identified lineal descendants plus a reasonable additional number who may be identified in the future and represents a reasonable and long overdue resolution of this issue. Finally, I want to clarify the intent of a portion of subsection (f) of section 8, a subsection added to S. 391 in the last few days. The reference in subparagraph (2)(B) of that subsection to ``any such claims'' includes any claim that may be brought in intervention by a covered Indian tribe. I urge my colleagues to adopt S. 391.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--I will not object--I want to inquire, has that been cleared on this side?

Mr. DORGAN. I thank the Senator.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from Oklahoma will yield for a question?