Russell Feingold

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am enjoying this debate and also enjoying the Senator's command of popular culture. I think this has been a very instructive thing for me over the past few years to work with him on this. I admire his passion. It is born of a lot of experience and knowledge of foreign policy over the years, to which I defer. So I do respect him on this and appreciate the kind words about the savings we have achieved. The Senator is right. And I do try to be straightforward. The Senator from Delaware would say, in fact, he is correct. We have made those savings working together, including with the chairman, whose good support also made that possible. That is a victory that we can be happy about. But I can't just look at this bill and feel this is the end of the story. Whatever analogy you want to use, winning the inning but not winning the game, it is not terribly satisfying if you achieve something and then find out a few years later that you set up a scenario--not a fact, I again give you that, but a scenario--where you have the feeling that it might come undone, that there is a good chance it will come undone. Because we are making what appear to be the same mistakes that were made in the past, in terms of how this was set up, that led to the abuses, that led to the need for the agreement that the Senator and I put together several years ago. It reminds me of the expression, I still can't find out who said it, I don't know if it was President Reagan or President Bush, something along the lines that ``the only thing that is immortal in Washington, DC, is a Federal agency,'' this concern that somehow we can't ever wean ourselves from the structure of an independent agency, that once they exist they have their own constituency and they exist forever.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, to conclude, the letter from Taxpayers for Common Sense really did a good job of reiterating that the question underlying this debate is whether the Senate is capable of following through on budget cuts. If we today recreate the same BIB structure we abolished just 3 years ago, the savings achieved in the 1994 act could be jeopardized and the effort to privatize these radios could be undermined by this new agency as it desperately struggles to justify its existence. I hope that the Members of the Senate will reject the creation of this new Federal agency and adopt my amendment. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 Taxpayers for Common Sense, Washington, DC, June 13, 1997. Attn: Foreign Relations L.A.--floor action Monday, June 16. Taxpayers Ask: Why Can't Senate Cut? support feingold amendment on state dept. authorization the 1994 law terminated the bib and said radio free europe will be privatized why does committee bill create new agency for rfe Dear Senator: When the Senate considers the State Department Reauthorization bill, Taxpayers for Common Sense strongly urges you to support the Feingold amendment. In 1994, Congress passed legislation terminating the Board of International Broadcasting (BIB), an independent federal agency responsible for administering Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty [RFE/RL]. In doing so, the legislation mandated that steps be taken to privatize RFE/RL. The legislation also established a Broadcasting Board of Governors within the U.S. Information Agency in order to curb extensive internal problems that plagued the programs under the BIB structure. Contrary to the law and to congressional intent--and contrary to the House bill--the version of the State Department Authorization Bill recently reported by the Foreign Relations Committee would actually create a new federal agency strikingly similar to the old BIB. Congress terminated the BIB just three years ago with overwhelming bipartisan support. The BIB structure fostered rampant fiscal abuses, lavish executive salaries and executive perks, despite numerous GAO and Inspector General reports noting fiscal problems over the course of two decades. The Feingold amendment would strike the provisions that would create a new federal agency and ensure that RFE/RL is privatized by December 31, 1999, as indicated by the International Broadcasting Act of 1994. TCS supports this amendment. While the budgetary savings may be relatively small compared to the entire federal budget, the questions at stake are large: Can the Senate follow through on budget cuts? Is the Senate incapable of maintaining even this tiny budget cut? Is foreign spending exempt from the budget cuts that impact Americans at home? The Feingold amendment is a step toward restoring the confidence of American taxpayers that U.S. international programs are wise expenditures. Sincerely, Ralph DeGennaro, Executive Director. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to S. 903, the State Department authorization bill for fiscal year 1998. What my amendment would do is strike the provisions in division A of the bill concerning international broadcasting activities in the United States. Mr. President, I find it rather extraordinary that in the very bill that seeks to reorganize and consolidate the foreign policy apparatus of the U.S. Government, we find language to create a new independent Federal agency to administer the U.S. international broadcasting program. Let me be clear on this: This bill creates a new Federal agency. It grants that agency the authorities and mandates that all Federal agencies have under title 5. It also gives the agency the authority to hire temporary workers and to grant them reimbursement for their services, and it also gives the agency the authority to receive donations. So despite the claims you will shortly hear that are to the contrary, make no mistake, Mr. President, this is a new agency. Now, some will argue, of course, that there is no net increase in Federal agencies since at the same time that we create a new independent agency to operate the international broadcasting operations, we are also abolishing the U.S. Information Agency. So you will probably hear the argument that we are giving up one and adding a new one. I am afraid, though, Mr. President, that that argument hardly passes the laugh test. It is a new agency. You can be sure of one thing: It is going to act like an agency, too. This language simply makes no sense in light of the hard work that the Congress invested in 1993 and 1994 in restructuring the United States' role in overseas broadcasting. We consolidated various programs and we took some very clear steps to move Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty down the road to privatization. In the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994, the Foreign Relations Committee took the lead in doing something that is all too unusual. It is unusual to find a program eliminated in Washington, but we, in that committee, and on this floor, Mr. President, actually wiped out a Federal agency. At the time, that agency was called the Board for International Broadcasting or the BIB. We consolidated all of our Government's international broadcasting programs, including the Voice of America, as well as the so-called surrogate programs, such as RFE/RL. We did it within one Federal agency--the U.S. Information Agency, which is the government's public diplomacy arm. The 1994 act imposed tight fiscal controls on the two programs that were rife with fiscal abuse and mismanagement. It mandated steps toward privatization for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Very importantly, it also ensured an active role by the inspector general. As a result, Mr. President--and this is no small matter--of this one series of actions and consolidation, we saved the Federal Government, the taxpayers of this country, on this one change alone, close to $1 billion over a 9-year period. This isn't me talking about what can be done if we do something--we did it. We started in 1993 and we saved $1 billion. That was my first bill here as a Member of the Senate. I am extremely pleased that the changes proposed in this bill cannot undo the fiscal progress that we have made in the past. I add that, at this time, when we are trying so hard to finalize our promising work on balancing the budget that this $1 billion in savings was an important step in that direction. But there was more to the story--a story of abuse. At the time Congress took this action, the RFE/RL was spending 25 percent of their budget on administrative costs, while the Voice of America was spending less than half of that--only 12 percent. Lavish salaries. Mr. President, there were salaries of $200,000 to $300,000, paid by the American taxpayers; and perks for executives that were a deeply ingrained way of life in these programs. These excesses are what inspired me and other Members of Congress to take a long hard look at how to fix this problem. This, of course, is our role--to oversee the programs of the executive branch and protect the dollars of the people who elect us. In this particular case, we actually did a pretty good job, after many years. Now, though, Mr. President, I am concerned about what will happen in the future. Now the Foreign Relations Committee has reported out a bill that includes language to recreate what, to me, looks virtually identical to this old BIB, the agency we finally got rid of. It creates an independent Federal agency, governed by a board of directors. Others may say that the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or the BBG, under the arrangement assumed by this bill, is very different from the old BIB. I will agree that the BBG is a stronger, more disciplined body than its predecessor; but because of its worldwide presence, international broadcasting is unfortunately an area that is almost inherently vulnerable to mismanagement and abuse. It is very hard to oversee, especially if it is constituted through an independent agency. In the past, the BIB fell prey to these vulnerabilities and exercised virtually no control over the abuse of the radios under its jurisdiction. There were two decades worth of GAO and inspector general reports noting fiscal and other problems with the radios, but the BIB just chose to ignore them. Spending abuses were brought under control under the BBG structure because of very detailed congressional mandates contained in the 1994 legislation. That didn't happen because the board suddenly decided to clean up its act nor because of any inherent qualities of the BBG itself; it is because we here in Congress did our job and mandated that this organization clean up its act. Mr. President, it is my view that recreating this independent structure is a roadmap for a return to where we started out 3 years ago. I find it simply incomprehensible that just as we are consolidating our foreign policy apparatus under the reorganization plan in this bill, we would create a new Federal agency that is virtually identical to the one we wiped out less than 3 years ago. Mr. President, let me outline briefly the problems I have with this broadcasting section of the bill. First, fiscal abuse. The structure proposed by the bill, as I have indicated, has historically been a breeding ground for fiscal abuses. These weren't just uncovered 3 years ago. I have a stack of GAO reports and IG reports going back two decades documenting the fiscal abuses that this independent structure generated. It was this independent structure, sitting out by itself, not being managed or controlled by any part of our Federal Government directly, that had these problems. A colleague from many years ago, Senator John Pastore, in 1976, said of the problems of this organization, ``The abuse has reached the point of becoming almost scandalous * * *'' That is what we put an end to in 1994. We put an end, finally, to two decades of abuse. A second problem, Mr. President, is privatization. We made a clear commitment in 1994 that Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty would be privatized by the end of this century, only 2\1/2\ years from now. Mr. President, why would we now recreate an independent agency to administer the grants for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty for such a short period of time? If we create this new entity, I can assure you that somehow it will find a justification to continue. All of the hard work and all of the consensus that was developed around the basic idea that it is high time that RFE/RL be privatized will be under attack. We have a chance to finally privatize something. We are almost there. But this bill seeks to undo that. Third, Mr. President, as I have indicated several times, and will again, this bill creates a new Federal agency. I find it hard to believe that this Congress, which has been dedicated to downsizing the Federal Government and achieving deficit reduction, would choose to create today a new Federal agency--an agency that isn't even needed. That is exactly what these provisions will do--create an unnecessary, new Federal agency, with all the overhead, all the bureaucracy, and all of the trappings of a brand new agency. Mr. President, I also wish to respond briefly to the arguments made by the proponents of this proposal and, in particular, my good friend and leader on these issues, the Senator from Delaware, Senator Biden, who cares deeply about this issue. First, Mr. President, he asserts that the fiscal controls and measures designed to curb the kinds of flagrant abuses that plagued RFE/RL in the past will be retained under the new structure, and that nothing we achieved in terms of deficit reduction will be lost as a result of the new structure he has proposed. I sure hope he is right; but I doubt it. I appreciate the intent, but I am concerned that history has shown that just the opposite is going to happen, that what we have achieved could well be undermined by recreating the kind of structure and incentives that led to these problems in the first place. Now, what do I mean by incentives? I mean the natural propensity of any institution--especially an entirely independent institution--to protect itself, to try to expand itself, and to relentlessly try to find a way to justify its existence. That is inherent in the nature of independent agencies. If the radios are actually going to be privatized by the end of 1999, what is this new Federal agency going to be doing in 2\1/2\ years? Are they going to be running the Voice of America? Is there a reason, all of a sudden, after all these years, to create a new agency to run the Voice of America? I don't think so. I don't think the Senator from Delaware would be proposing this structure if his concern was the independence of the Voice of America. Rather, his concern has been clearly stated in the past, and it is to house the surrogate radios, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and others that are scheduled to lose their Federal support in 1999. Even Radio Free Asia, RFA, has a sunset date in the authorizing legislation that terminates its authority in 1998. So what is the agency going to do after all these rather up and coming dates arrive? What are they going to do, Mr. President? Are they going to lobby Members to extend these deadlines? I am concerned that they will. Is there any doubt in the minds of anyone in this room that if we create a new Federal agency, it will do all it can to find good reasons to argue that it has to continue to exist. Secondly, the proponents of these provisions will say that we are talking about something different here because the broadcasting functions have been successfully consolidated into one agency. We mandated the consolidation intentionally, Mr. President, to save money and to eliminate duplication. Mr. President, if these provisions are adopted, the gains we made in both of these areas could be lost. Rather than using, in the name of efficiency, the accounting, personnel, and support services that already exist in the State Department--as it has with the services of USIA--this new entity will have to have its own legal office; it will have to have its own personnel department; it will have to have its own publication office, and who knows what else. That is what you get when you set up a new Federal agency. That agency needs all of those new things, instead of having the State Department handle it under its current budget. Again, these provisions--and, Mr. President, I hope I am making the case--head in completely the opposite direction, not only of the whole spirit of the last couple of Congresses, but specifically in the opposite direction of the whole point of the bill the distinguished chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee has put forward in terms of consolidation and reorganization. Now, some may say that Congress can protect the taxpayer by maintaining the spending caps we put into the 1994 legislation. I am certainly glad those caps are still there, and that may be true for those programs that are capped. But what is not clear is what happens with administrative costs. Mr. President, the comptroller's office of USIA has explained to my staff that some $28 million in administrative services are currently provided to the broadcasting operations by the United States Information Agency. This represents expenditures that are over and above the annual operating budget for the broadcasting operations. Instead, these costs are borne by USIA for property and for housekeeping functions, such as payroll, the payment and vouchers, accounting, contracting, and security. On these latter items, broadcasting ``borrows'' partial time from USIA employees to carry out highly specialized tasks. If the broadcasting operations are to be separated out from USIA, as is contemplated by this bill now, it remains very unclear how broadcasting would get these services. Would the new public diplomacy bureau at the State Department have to provide these services and, if so, how would that be calculated? Or what would concern me the most is, will the new broadcasting entity, this new Federal agency, simply have to hire its own people, new Federal employees, new Federal positions to carry out those services? The point, Mr. President, is that the broadcasting operations currently appear to gain significant economies of scale by using the infrastructure of the USIA. That is what we caused to happen a few years ago. After decades of abuse, we finally forced this Government to show some efficiency and consolidation, and we got some economic benefit out of it. Instead, creating a new agency may lead us to lose those savings and force this new entity to come to Congress for new funds, or it may lead to a situation in which the broadcasting activities lose out when, for every new attorney, or office, or light bulb, and all the bureaucracy that goes with it, there will be less broadcasting hours to some far-flung place in the world to which we believe it is in our national interest to communicate. I guess this doesn't make any sense to me. Third, Mr. President--and this is really the most philosophical of the arguments--there are those who really passionately believe that an independent structure is required or is necessary in order to protect what is called the ``journalistic independence'' of these programs, and really this question gets to the core of what is going on. Either you think it is our national interest to continue to pay for-- not just subsidize, but pay for--independent radio programs, or you don't! I, for one, think it is essential to compare the surrogate radios to the Voice of America. VOA was created to be, and remains, an essential tool for the U.S. government to communicate U.S. policies and prerogatives to the rest of the world. Let me quote directly from the President's budget request concerning VOA's mission: ``The Voice of America was founded in 1942 to provide accurate, objective and comprehensive news and information about America and the world to listeners in other countries.'' VOA now broadcasts in more than 50 languages. WORLDNET television similarly supports and explains U.S. policy objectives to foreign audiences worldwide. VOA and WORLDNET employees are U.S. government employees, and no one doubts that a primary mission is to communicate the views of the U.S. government. The surrogates--Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty--on the other hand, concentrate their resources on reporting and analyzing domestic and regional events in the countries to which they broadcast. As someone who believes strongly in the rights of free speech and expression, I do not doubt that the development of independent media is perhaps one of the most important challenges for a newly democratizing country. And I do not question those who think that the United States should actively support or encourage such outlets. But that does not necessarily imply that we should bear the cost of running an entire service! The fact that U.S. tax payers are still subsidizing RFE/RL broadcasts to Poland astounds me. We are, in fact, subsidizing the competition in Poland and, in so doing, may even be preventing the development of other alternatives for this kind of activity in that country. But setting aside for a moment whether we should continue to pay for broadcasting in countries like Poland, let me focus upon the issue of so-called ``journalistic independence.'' Mr. President, let me just briefly review some of the history. First, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were established by the CIA, a fact widely known, for the purpose of undermining communist governments. Second, they have been funded by the US taxpayers from their inception, a fact that is also widely known and not disputed. Third, the Board of Directors for this new entity, like the current one, is appointed by the President of the United States. I would like to know how you can be independent of the U.S. government when your governing board is appointed by the President of the United States! Let me make sure everyone understands the bizarre relationship between the BBG and RFE/RL. This is an interlocking board of directors: the members of the BBG are--by statute--identical to the members of the RFE/RL board. As bizarre as it may be to an outsider, the BBG gives a grant to RFE/RL, even through they each have the same board. And these board members are all appointed by the President of the United States! Fourth, their budget is debated by Congress each year. Numerous Congressional committees call them up to account for how this money is being spent. We are even debating it right now. So how can you even make any kind of claim to be independent on those facts? No one is going to buy it. In fact, as the fifth point, let us be honest. The rest of the world views these radios as belonging to--guess who? The United States. Whatever games you want to play with their names or their governing structures, everybody knows these broadcasts represent the views of the United States. U.S. officials parade through these facilities abroad all the time. When President Clinton was in Prague in early 1994, the President of the Czech Republic offered the United States facilities within Prague to house RFE/RL. The Czech President offered the buildings to the U.S. President, because he knew, as the whole world knows, that these radios are 100 percent owned by the US government, paid for by the US taxpayers, and subject to oversight by the US Congress. Frankly, Mr. President, I do not see how these programs can ever really be independent as long as they are dependent upon federal funding. If they want journalistic independence, the best way is the old-fashioned way: stop taking Federal dollars. If these programs need autonomy and independence, the best thing they can do is to privatize. Mr. President, I know the debate over ``journalistic independence'' and over how the United States can best support newly emerging democracies is one that can be highly emotional for many Members of this Chamber. But whichever side my colleagues come out on, I urge you to consider what I find to be the most offensive part of this bill, and that is the provision to create a new, independent federal agency. I do not want to be repetitive, but I just can't believe that the Senate, that this body that is working so hard to eliminate inefficiencies and duplications in the Government, would have supported provisions such as these in a bill such as this. So Mr. President, let me point out that my amendment has been endorsed by groups who have worked hard to reduce the Federal deficit and eliminate unnecessary spending programs, including Citizens Against Government Waste and Taxpayers for Common Sense. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from Taxpayers for Common Sense regarding this amendment and in support of the amendment be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

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

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of myself, the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin] and the Senator from Oregon [Mr. Wyden] and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the pending business be set aside.

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

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, this amendment would establish an independent inspector general for the new agency. Under the committee- reported legislation, the State Department's IG would assume responsibility for the new agency. An independent IG was designated for the Board for International Broadcasting in the 1988 inspector general legislation. When we consolidated BIB into USIA in the 1994 broadcasting legislation, those functions were assumed by the USIA Inspector General. More recently, the USIA inspector general's office was merged with the State Department inspector general. Because of the problems that had plagued the BIB and the role that the then-BIB inspector general's office had played in bringing those problems to public attention through a series of well-documented reviews, I authored provisions in the 1994 legislation that required continuous on-site monitoring by the inspector general of the activities of RFE/RL. Frankly, Mr. President, I have been disappointed at the level of attention and quality of work that has been provided by the State Department IG since that office assumed responsibilities for the broadcasting programs. History has demonstrated, over and over, that these programs have been fertile grounds for fiscal abuses and mismanagement. Between 1988 and 1994, the independent IG assigned solely to the BIB produced detailed reports to Congress every 6 months on the problem areas, in addition to a series of special reports that helped identify the abuses in the areas of excessive salaries, deferred compensation, housing allowances, travel improprieties, and other problem areas within BIB. If we are going down the path of recreating the BIB structure, then I think it is very important that we recreate the watchdog entity that helped bring to light what fiscal abuses were rampant in these programs under the independent agency structure. I am very concerned that the IG's office in the State Department may have little incentive to provide the broadcasting programs the kinds of scrutiny that is warranted, given the history of abuse. Therefore, the amendment that I am offering will reestablish the independent IG's office within the new agency in the same manner that its predecessor, BIB, had an independent IG. I appreciate the willingness of the managers to accept this amendment. amendment no. 408 (Purpose: To assist victims of torture by providing funding for the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture) At the end of section 2101(a) of the bill, insert the following: ``Of the funds made available under this subsection $3,000,000 for the fiscal year 1998 and $3,000,000 for the fiscal year 1999 are authorized to be appropriated only for a United States contribution to the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.''.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, let me thank the chairman of the Banking Committee, Mr. D'Amato, and the distinguished ranking member, Mr. Sarbanes, for accepting this modification to H.R. 1306, which preserves the right of States to opt out of Federal preemption under provisions of the 1980 Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act [DIDA]. With this amendment, the measure retains a key distinction between DIDA and the National Bank Act by continuing to allow States the right to regulate, except as to national banks, both interest rates and noninterest rate terms, such as late charges, over the limit fees, and not-sufficient fund fees, and I am pleased to offer this modification. As the former chairman of the Wisconsin Senate Banking Committee, I know the important role of State in this area, and of the contribution State regulation makes to the entire banking system. As the interstate banking and branching laws are implemented, it is critical that States retain that vital role.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Child Exploitation Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1997. I am pleased to be joined in this effort by my friend and colleague from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senator DeWine. The legislation we are introducing today will increase the criminal penalties for individuals who use computers and the Internet to commit crimes of sexual abuse and exploitation against children. Just as the miraculous advances in computer technology have opened new worlds to many of us, some have chosen to exploit these technologies to advance criminal activity. Most troubling are those who use computers and the Internet to sexually exploit and abuse children. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which supports this legislation, criminals are increasingly using computer telecommunications technology as a means to assist in the sexual victimization of young children. Mr. President, there can be no doubt that the Internet and advancing computer technologies provide each of us with many new and promising means of communication. However, when these technologies are used to further the criminal sexual exploitation and abuse of children, it is essential, in my view, that this conduct be punished more severely. FBI Director Louis Freeh recently testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice and State and highlighted this problem; The same marvelous advances in computer and telecommunications technology that allow our children to reach out to new sources of knowledge and cultural experiences are also leaving them unwittingly vulnerable to exploitation and harm by pedophiles and other sexual predators in ways never before possible. Mr. President, advances in technology should not be the shield from behind which pedophiles and sexual molesters target and prey upon our children. In responding to this problem, the Feingold-DeWine legislation directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to increase criminal penalties for people who intentionally use a computer to entice children into illicit sexual conduct. The bill also directs that sentences be increased for those criminals who seek out children on the Internet and misrepresent their true identity in a knowing effort to gain the trust of the child they intend to sexually victimize. The provisions in this bill are directed squarely at those molesters and sexual predators who go on-line and hang out in computer chat rooms targeting unknowing young victims. One distinct and unfortunate advantage of the Internet for criminals is that they are able to reach a much wider audience of potential victims than they would if physical contact were required to initiate their criminal activity. Another troubling aspect of this situation is that criminals are provided with near fool-proof anonymity while cruising the Internet looking for victims. In some cases, victims are enticed or lured to meet with the sexual molester. The ability for the criminal to misrepresent their true identity and thus gain the confidence of the victim is a significant aspect of these crimes. Director Freeh also noted this problem recently: Pedophiles often seek out young children by either participating in or monitoring activities in chat rooms that are provided by commercial on-line services for teenagers and preteens to converse with each other. These chat rooms also provide pedophiles an anonymous means of establishing relationships with children. Using a chat room, a child can converse for hours with unknown individuals, often without the knowledge or approval of their parents. There is no easy way for the child to know if the person he or she is talking with is, in fact, another 14-year-old, or is a 40-year-old sexual predator masquerading as a peer. Clearly, Mr. President, a child molester who stalks children on the information superhighway derives benefits that are simply not present if direct physical contact is required to target and recruit the victim. Director Freeh's testimony also noted that sexual criminals also target young victims by posing as children looking for pen pals or by posting notices on computer bulletin boards in order to facilitate and develop relationships which can in turn provide a victim for the predator's illegal sexual activity. In addition to increasing sentences for criminal activity involving this type of conduct, the legislation expands the pattern of activity sentencing enhancement to a wider range of sexual abuse and exploitation crimes. In doing so, those criminals who have shown an ongoing pattern of sexually exploiting minors will be held accountable for their conduct through longer prison sentences. In doing so, the criminal is incapacitated for a longer period of time thus reducing the potential that they will be set free to victimize again. This sentencing enhancement will now be applicable in cases of sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, and the coercion and enticement of minors for an illegal sexual activity. Additionally, this legislation targets repeat offenders by increasing penalties for repeat offenses and by increasing maximum penalties available under the Federal criminal code. Finally, the legislation authorizes funding to be used to appoint guardian ad litem for children who are the victims of, or witnesses to, crimes involving abuse or exploitation. Mr. President, there can be no doubt that our children are our most precious resource. I am the father of teenage children and I, like any parent, worry about the health and safety of my children. I encourage my children to utilize the Internet and to gain the benefits of these amazing new technologies--technologies which simply did not exist a few years ago or when I was growing up. During my tenure in this body I have been a strong believer in the potential of the Internet and sincerely hope that as we move toward the next century that potential will be realized. However, in doing so, I am mindful of the dangers that always exist when individuals--criminals--exploit a new technology to further their illicit criminal activity. The legislation being introduced today speaks directly to the small percentage of individuals who intentionally misuse the Internet to sexually prey upon children. The adoption of this legislation will send a loud and clear message that the Congress of the United States will not tolerate the sexual exploitation of our young people and that the information superhighway will not become a haven for pedophiles and sexual predators. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the legislation be printed in the Record as well as a copy of a letter from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in support of the bill.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am pleased to rise as an original cosponsor of the bill to prohibit U.S. deployment of antipersonnel landmines introduced today by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] and the Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Hagel]. I want to commend the Senator from Vermont for his countless hours of work to ban antipersonnel landmines. As we all know, Mr. President, antipersonnel landmines continue to ravage the populations of war-torn areas around the world long after the last shot has been fired and the soldiers have gone home. These weapons pose an enduring threat to postwar reconstruction efforts and to innocent civilians in places such as Bosnia, Angola, and Cambodia. These instruments of war lay in fields where children now play or where farmers seek to grow food for the local populations. In fact, displaced populations are often unable to return to their homes because of the presence of unmarked landmines, and roads have been rendered useless since they cannot be traveled. Antipersonnel landmines cause such high levels of civilian casualties, 500 wounded or killed per week in fact, that they have been called weapons of mass destruction in slow motion. In 1995, this body went on record against landmines by passing an amendment offered by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] to the fiscal year 1996 Department of Defense authorization bill which I was pleased to cosponsor. That amendment imposed a moratorium on the use of antipersonnel landmines except in limited circumstances. While, unfortunately, we can never be sure that war-torn areas are completely clear of all active landmines, the current Leahy-Hagel bill will prohibit any U.S. agency from deploying or arming any new antipersonnel landmines after January 1, 2000. This bipartisan legislation also contains language relating to the deployment of landmines on the Korean Peninsula. While I believe that this is an important first step in the eventual elimination of new landmines from the face of the Earth, there is much work still to be done. I, and many other Senators, believe that this legislation represents the least we can do on this subject. Because of this view, I wrote to President Clinton in February to express my contention that a ban on antipersonnel landmines should be an urgent priority for the United States. In that same letter, I voiced my support for the so-called Ottawa initiative, which calls for a total ban on the production, storage, trade, or use of antipersonnel landmines and includes a plan to develop and sign a treaty by December 1997. In my view, the administration's decision to pursue negotiations through the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, rather than the Ottawa initiative, jeopardizes the likelihood that the Ottawa initiative will succeed. I believe that we should work within the framework of the Ottawa initiative because it is the best avenue currently available to a total worldwide ban on landmines. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on African Affairs, I cannot ignore the approximately 110 million uncleared landmines across the globe. To their credit, some of the countries whose landscapes are riddled with these weapons have begun to take positive steps to ban their further use. In February, the South African Government announced its intention to ban the use, production, development, and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. In a news conference announcing this decision, the South African defense minister said that the ``indiscriminate use [of landmines] has had a devastating effect internationally, in Africa and in our region. In Angola, the number of amputations resulting from antipersonnel landmines is, tragically, one of the highest in the world, and in Mozambique, thousands of these mines remain uncleared.'' The worldwide devastation caused by landmines was discussed earlier this year at the Fourth Annual NGO Conference in Landmines in Maputo, Mozambique. While the conference focused on clearing landmines from Southern Africa, the tales of destruction and death could apply to many areas of the globe. Since the 1992 Peace Agreement ending the civil war in Mozambique, more than 100 people have been killed by landmines, two- thirds of them children. Mr. President, we owe it to these children-- who have seen too much violence and death in their young lives--to make sure they have a safe place to play. And we owe it to our young men and women in uniform, who have represented our Nation so well across the globe, to make sure that the United States will cease deploying new landmines. In closing, Mr. President, this legislation is an important first step in protecting future generations from the devastation that many face on a daily basis all over the world. This bill gives the United States the opportunity to take a leadership role in the banning of antipersonnel landmines. This is an opportunity we should not miss.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Child Exploitation Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1997. I am pleased to be joined in this effort by my friend and colleague from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Senator DeWine. The legislation we are introducing today will increase the criminal penalties for individuals who use computers and the Internet to commit crimes of sexual abuse and exploitation against children. Just as the miraculous advances in computer technology have opened new worlds to many of us, some have chosen to exploit these technologies to advance criminal activity. Most troubling are those who use computers and the Internet to sexually exploit and abuse children. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which supports this legislation, criminals are increasingly using computer telecommunications technology as a means to assist in the sexual victimization of young children. Mr. President, there can be no doubt that the Internet and advancing computer technologies provide each of us with many new and promising means of communication. However, when these technologies are used to further the criminal sexual exploitation and abuse of children, it is essential, in my view, that this conduct be punished more severely. FBI Director Louis Freeh recently testified before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice and State and highlighted this problem; The same marvelous advances in computer and telecommunications technology that allow our children to reach out to new sources of knowledge and cultural experiences are also leaving them unwittingly vulnerable to exploitation and harm by pedophiles and other sexual predators in ways never before possible. Mr. President, advances in technology should not be the shield from behind which pedophiles and sexual molesters target and prey upon our children. In responding to this problem, the Feingold-DeWine legislation directs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to increase criminal penalties for people who intentionally use a computer to entice children into illicit sexual conduct. The bill also directs that sentences be increased for those criminals who seek out children on the Internet and misrepresent their true identity in a knowing effort to gain the trust of the child they intend to sexually victimize. The provisions in this bill are directed squarely at those molesters and sexual predators who go on-line and hang out in computer chat rooms targeting unknowing young victims. One distinct and unfortunate advantage of the Internet for criminals is that they are able to reach a much wider audience of potential victims than they would if physical contact were required to initiate their criminal activity. Another troubling aspect of this situation is that criminals are provided with near fool-proof anonymity while cruising the Internet looking for victims. In some cases, victims are enticed or lured to meet with the sexual molester. The ability for the criminal to misrepresent their true identity and thus gain the confidence of the victim is a significant aspect of these crimes. Director Freeh also noted this problem recently: Pedophiles often seek out young children by either participating in or monitoring activities in chat rooms that are provided by commercial on-line services for teenagers and preteens to converse with each other. These chat rooms also provide pedophiles an anonymous means of establishing relationships with children. Using a chat room, a child can converse for hours with unknown individuals, often without the knowledge or approval of their parents. There is no easy way for the child to know if the person he or she is talking with is, in fact, another 14-year-old, or is a 40-year-old sexual predator masquerading as a peer. Clearly, Mr. President, a child molester who stalks children on the information superhighway derives benefits that are simply not present if direct physical contact is required to target and recruit the victim. Director Freeh's testimony also noted that sexual criminals also target young victims by posing as children looking for pen pals or by posting notices on computer bulletin boards in order to facilitate and develop relationships which can in turn provide a victim for the predator's illegal sexual activity. In addition to increasing sentences for criminal activity involving this type of conduct, the legislation expands the pattern of activity sentencing enhancement to a wider range of sexual abuse and exploitation crimes. In doing so, those criminals who have shown an ongoing pattern of sexually exploiting minors will be held accountable for their conduct through longer prison sentences. In doing so, the criminal is incapacitated for a longer period of time thus reducing the potential that they will be set free to victimize again. This sentencing enhancement will now be applicable in cases of sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, and the coercion and enticement of minors for an illegal sexual activity. Additionally, this legislation targets repeat offenders by increasing penalties for repeat offenses and by increasing maximum penalties available under the Federal criminal code. Finally, the legislation authorizes funding to be used to appoint guardian ad litem for children who are the victims of, or witnesses to, crimes involving abuse or exploitation. Mr. President, there can be no doubt that our children are our most precious resource. I am the father of teenage children and I, like any parent, worry about the health and safety of my children. I encourage my children to utilize the Internet and to gain the benefits of these amazing new technologies--technologies which simply did not exist a few years ago or when I was growing up. During my tenure in this body I have been a strong believer in the potential of the Internet and sincerely hope that as we move toward the next century that potential will be realized. However, in doing so, I am mindful of the dangers that always exist when individuals--criminals--exploit a new technology to further their illicit criminal activity. The legislation being introduced today speaks directly to the small percentage of individuals who intentionally misuse the Internet to sexually prey upon children. The adoption of this legislation will send a loud and clear message that the Congress of the United States will not tolerate the sexual exploitation of our young people and that the information superhighway will not become a haven for pedophiles and sexual predators. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the legislation be printed in the Record as well as a copy of a letter from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in support of the bill.

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am pleased to rise as an original cosponsor of the bill to prohibit U.S. deployment of antipersonnel landmines introduced today by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] and the Senator from Nebraska [Mr. Hagel]. I want to commend the Senator from Vermont for his countless hours of work to ban antipersonnel landmines. As we all know, Mr. President, antipersonnel landmines continue to ravage the populations of war-torn areas around the world long after the last shot has been fired and the soldiers have gone home. These weapons pose an enduring threat to postwar reconstruction efforts and to innocent civilians in places such as Bosnia, Angola, and Cambodia. These instruments of war lay in fields where children now play or where farmers seek to grow food for the local populations. In fact, displaced populations are often unable to return to their homes because of the presence of unmarked landmines, and roads have been rendered useless since they cannot be traveled. Antipersonnel landmines cause such high levels of civilian casualties, 500 wounded or killed per week in fact, that they have been called weapons of mass destruction in slow motion. In 1995, this body went on record against landmines by passing an amendment offered by the Senator from Vermont [Mr. Leahy] to the fiscal year 1996 Department of Defense authorization bill which I was pleased to cosponsor. That amendment imposed a moratorium on the use of antipersonnel landmines except in limited circumstances. While, unfortunately, we can never be sure that war-torn areas are completely clear of all active landmines, the current Leahy-Hagel bill will prohibit any U.S. agency from deploying or arming any new antipersonnel landmines after January 1, 2000. This bipartisan legislation also contains language relating to the deployment of landmines on the Korean Peninsula. While I believe that this is an important first step in the eventual elimination of new landmines from the face of the Earth, there is much work still to be done. I, and many other Senators, believe that this legislation represents the least we can do on this subject. Because of this view, I wrote to President Clinton in February to express my contention that a ban on antipersonnel landmines should be an urgent priority for the United States. In that same letter, I voiced my support for the so-called Ottawa initiative, which calls for a total ban on the production, storage, trade, or use of antipersonnel landmines and includes a plan to develop and sign a treaty by December 1997. In my view, the administration's decision to pursue negotiations through the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, rather than the Ottawa initiative, jeopardizes the likelihood that the Ottawa initiative will succeed. I believe that we should work within the framework of the Ottawa initiative because it is the best avenue currently available to a total worldwide ban on landmines. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on African Affairs, I cannot ignore the approximately 110 million uncleared landmines across the globe. To their credit, some of the countries whose landscapes are riddled with these weapons have begun to take positive steps to ban their further use. In February, the South African Government announced its intention to ban the use, production, development, and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines. In a news conference announcing this decision, the South African defense minister said that the ``indiscriminate use [of landmines] has had a devastating effect internationally, in Africa and in our region. In Angola, the number of amputations resulting from antipersonnel landmines is, tragically, one of the highest in the world, and in Mozambique, thousands of these mines remain uncleared.'' The worldwide devastation caused by landmines was discussed earlier this year at the Fourth Annual NGO Conference in Landmines in Maputo, Mozambique. While the conference focused on clearing landmines from Southern Africa, the tales of destruction and death could apply to many areas of the globe. Since the 1992 Peace Agreement ending the civil war in Mozambique, more than 100 people have been killed by landmines, two- thirds of them children. Mr. President, we owe it to these children-- who have seen too much violence and death in their young lives--to make sure they have a safe place to play. And we owe it to our young men and women in uniform, who have represented our Nation so well across the globe, to make sure that the United States will cease deploying new landmines. In closing, Mr. President, this legislation is an important first step in protecting future generations from the devastation that many face on a daily basis all over the world. This bill gives the United States the opportunity to take a leadership role in the banning of antipersonnel landmines. This is an opportunity we should not miss.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce S. 879, the Long-Term Care Reform and Deficit Reduction Act of 1997, legislation to reform fundamentally the way we provide long-term care in this country. This legislation gives States the flexibility to establish a system of consumer-oriented, consumer-directed home and community-based long- term care services for individuals with disabilities of any age. It does so while reducing the deficit by $30.4 billion over the next 5 years, and $145.7 billion over the next 10 years with the potential for even greater savings. Mr. President, the bill is based on Wisconsin's home and community- based long-term care program, the Community Options Program, called COP, which has been a national model of reform. COP was the keystone of Wisconsin's long-term care reforms that have saved Wisconsin taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The legislation is also similar, in large part, to the excellent bipartisan long-term care proposals developed by the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources as well as the Senate Committee on Finance during the 103d Congress, which in turn stemmed from the long-term care reforms included in President Clinton's health care reform proposal. Unlike so many other aspects of health care reform, the long-term care provisions that came out of the two Senate committees, that were included in the Mitchell compromise measure, and that were part of the proposals produced by the standing committees in the other body, received bipartisan support. It is somewhat remarkable that when there was so much controversy over so many issues relating to health care reform that there was so much agreement over the need to include long- term care reform. Mr. President, the success of the Wisconsin program upon which this measure is based stems in large part from its flexibility, a flexibility that benefits both individual consumers of long-term care as well as local administrators. This legislation reflects that same kind of flexibility. First and foremost, it does so by not creating a new, unfunded mandate. This program is entirely optional for States, and beyond four core services--assessment, care planning, personal assistance, and case management--those States choosing to participate will be free to decide what additional services, if any, they want to offer. States would be able but not required to offer such things as homemaker services, home modifications, respite, assistive devices, adult day care, supported employment, home health care, or any other service that would help keep a disabled individual at home or in the community. Equally important, the measure provides both some initial funding, and the ability of States to recapture the bulk of the savings they can generate within the current long-term care system. The bill directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit to Congress a proposal by which States could retain, in this new more flexible program, 75 percent of the Federal Medicaid long-term care savings they are able to generate. This not only provides a direct incentive for States to produce Medicaid savings, it also directly links the future of this reform to its ability to deliver results. The legislation also creates a small hospital link pilot program based on our experiences in Wisconsin where such an initiative has helped direct individuals needing long-term care services out of hospitals, and back to their own homes and communities. The hospital discharge is a critical point of embarkation into the long-term care system for many, and this program helps ensure that those who leave a hospital in need of long-term care can receive needed services where they prefer them--in their own homes. Mr. President, though I am convinced that long-term care reform can result in substantial savings to taxpayers--and this has been our experience in Wisconsin--this measure does not depend on hypothetical savings for funding. This measure includes funding provisions consisting of specific savings within the health care system. Those savings include extending and making permanent the Medicare secondary payer provisions; establishing a prospective payment system under Medicare for nursing homes; eliminating the technical errors in the reimbursement of certain outpatient hospital services, known as the formula-driven overpayments; and, reforming the way Medicare risk contractors are reimbursed. Mr. President, this last provision, fixing the payment system for Medicare HMO's, deserves special notice. The current system of reimbursement is flawed, and results in grossly inequitable distribution of costs and benefits within Medicare. Because the risk contract reimbursement formula is driven by the average fee-for-service costs in an area, Medicare beneficiaries in States like Wisconsin, where Medicare's standard fee-for-service costs are kept low, are punished. By contrast, areas with higher costs, including costs driven by unnecessary utilization and even waste, fraud, and abuse, are rewarded with generous benefit packages and little or no copayments. This system of incentives is backward, and I am pleased to include a proposal to bring some sense and equity to Medicare's reimbursement of risk contracts as part of this measure. Mr. President, the offsetting reductions in this measure produce savings of $34.1 billion over 5 years, and $166.2 billion over 10 years. Altogether, including the long-term care reforms and grants to States, the bill produces net deficit reduction of $30.4 billion over 5 years, and $145.7 billion over 10 years. This must be the approach we adopt, even for those proposals which experience shows will result in savings. By including funding provisions in this long-term care reform measure, we ensure that any additional savings produced by these reforms will only further reduce the budget deficit. And there is strong evidence that there will be additional savings, as we have seen in Wisconsin. Between 1980 and 1993, while the rest of the country experienced increased Medicaid nursing home use of 35 percent, thanks to Wisconsin's long-term care reforms, Medicaid nursing home bed use actually dropped 16 percent in the State, saving Wisconsin taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. President, aside from the immediate benefits of reducing the budget deficit, we need long-term care reform in its own right. While the population of those needing long-term care is growing much faster than those providing indirect support as taxpayers, informal care, which is largely provided by families, has been stretched to the limit by the economics of health care and the increasing age of the caregivers themselves. The default system of formal long-term care, currently funded through the Medicaid Program, requires that individuals impoverish themselves before they can receive needed care, and it largely limits care to expensive institutional settings. Failure to reform long-term care will inevitably lead to increased use of the Medicaid system--the most expensive long-term care alternative for taxpayers, and the least desirable for consumers. Mr. President, there are few statistical forecasts as accurate as those dealing with our population, and estimates show that the population needing long-term care will explode during the next few decades. The elderly are the fastest growing segment of our population, with those over age 85--individuals most in need of long-term care--the fastest growing segment of the elderly. The over-85 population will triple in size between 1980 and 2030, and will be nearly seven times larger in 2050 than in 1980. The growth in the population of elderly needing some assistance is expected to be equally dramatic. Activities of daily living, or ADL's, are a common measure of need for long-term care services. These activities include eating, transferring in and out of bed, toileting, dressing, and bathing. In 1988, approximately 6.9 million elderly could not perform all of these activities. By 2000, this population is expected to increase to 9 million, and by 2040 to 18 million. Mr. President, that we have been able to stave off a long-term care crisis to date is due in large part to the direct caregiving provided by millions of families for their elderly and disabled family members. But here also we see that the demographic changes of the next several decades will result in increased strain on the current system. While the number of people in need of care is increasing rapidly, the population supporting those individuals, either through direct caregiving, or indirectly through their taxes, is growing much more slowly, and thus is shrinking in comparison. In 1900, there were about 7 elderly individuals for every 100 people of working age. As of 1990, the ratio was about 20 elderly for every 100, by 2020 the ratio will be 29 per 100, and after that it will rise to 38 per 100 by 2030. These population differences will be further aggravated by the changing nature of the family and the work force. As the Alzheimer's Association has noted, smaller families, delayed childbearing, more women in the work force, higher divorce rates, and increased mobility all mean there will be fewer primary caregivers available, and far less informal support for those who do continue to provide care to family members in need of long-term care services. Mr. President, while some elderly are relatively well off, thanks in part to programs like Social Security and Medicare that have kept many out of poverty, it is also true that too many seniors still find themselves living near or below the poverty line. This is especially true for those needing long-term care, who, on average, are poorer than those who do not need long-term care. In 1990, about 27 percent of people needing help with some activity of daily living survived on incomes below the poverty level, compared with 17 percent of all older people. About half of impaired elderly have income under 150 percent of poverty, compared with 35 percent of all elderly, and, according to Families USA, while 20 percent of the population as a whole had annual family income under $15,685 in 1992, nearly half of the disabled population had income under that level. Further aggravating the problem is that informal family member caregivers are getting older. These caregivers are already an average of 57, with 36 percent of caregivers 65 or older. As the population ages, so will the average age of caregivers, and as the population of caregivers increases, their ability to provide adequate informal care diminishes. Mr. President, all in all our country faces a rapidly growing population needing long-term care services, a population which is disproportionately poor. At the same time, the group of family caregivers, that has kept most of the population needing long-term care out of Government programs like Medicaid, is shrinking relative to those in need of services, and is becoming progressively older. The inescapable result of these trends is substantial pressure on Government provided long-term care services--services that are inadequate in several fundamental ways. First, with some exceptions, the current system fails to build effectively on the informal care provided by families. Mr. President, most people with disabilities, even with severe disabilities, rely on care in their home from family and friends. The Alzheimer's Association estimates that families provide between 80 and 90 percent of all care at home, willingly and without pay. The association estimates that this informal off-budget care would cost $54 billion to replace. This last figure can be only an estimate, not because it doesn't fairly represent the services currently being provided by family members, but because comparable services are largely unavailable from the long-term care system. The variety of home- and community-based services provided by family members simply do not exist in many areas. Mr. President, the prevalence of family-provided caregiving affirms that, in reforming our long-term care system, it is vital that we build on top of the existing informal care that is being provided, not try to substitute for that care by imposing a new system. The goal of long- term care reform is first to enable family caregivers to continue to provide the care they currently give and that their family members prefer. Mr. President, another weakness of the current long-term care system is the lack of a home and community service capacity. This is due in part to the inadequacies of the Medicaid Program. Enacted in 1965, Medicaid was primarily a response to the acute care needs of the poor. Though Congress did not envision Medicaid as a long-term care program, it quickly became the primary source of Government funds for long-term care services. For many years, those long-term services provided under Medicaid were almost exclusively institutionally based. Not until institutional services, such as nursing homes, had become well established were community- and home-based services funded. The result of the head start given institutional long-term care services has been a continuing bias toward institutions in our long- term care programs. The rate of nursing home use by the elderly since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid has doubled, while the community and home-based alternatives to institutional care are considered exceptions to institutional care. A State must get a waiver from the Federal Government in order to qualify for community and home-based nonmedical service alternatives under Medicaid and, in many cases, an individual must otherwise be headed to an institution in order to qualify for those Medicaid funded community and home-based alternative programs. More significantly, there remains an absolute entitlement to institutional care that does not exist for the home and community-based waiver alternatives. Mr. President, many families have been able to provide long-term care services themselves to their elderly and disabled family members, but the lack of even partial support services makes it increasingly difficult for families to choose to keep their family members at home. According to a 1991 Alzheimer's Association study, the family caregiving alternative to Government funded long-term care is likely to disappear not because of the increasing impairment of the long-term care consumer, but because of the physical, emotional, or financial exhaustion of the caregiver: Family caregivers suffer more stress-related illness, resulting from exhaustion, lowered immune functions, and injuries, than the general population . . . Depression among caregivers of the frail elderly is as high as 43 to 46 percent, nearly three times the norm. . . . The likelihood of health problems is heightened by the relatively high age of caregivers: the average is 57. Thirty-six percent of caregivers are 65 or older. Mr. President, the impact on the economy of the family caregiver is also significant. Beyond the obvious strain on the personal economy of those families with members needing long-term care services, there is also a significant effect on employers. One-quarter of American workers over the age of 30 care for an elderly parent, and this percentage is expected to increase with 40 percent of workers expecting to be caring for aging parents in the next 5 years. These are impressive statistics when one considers that caregivers report missing a week and a half of work each year in order to provide care, and nearly one-third of working caregivers have either quit their job or reduced their work hours because of their caregiving responsibilities. For those working 20 hours or fewer a week, over half have reduced their work hours because of caregiving responsibilities. Mr. President, long-term care is very much a woman's issue. Women live longer than men, and make up a greater portion of the population needing care. And women are much more likely to be the family member that is providing care to a loved one who needs long-term care. One in five women have a parent living in their home, and nearly half of adult daughters who are caregivers are unemployed. Over a quarter of these women said they either quit their jobs or retired early just to provide care for an older person. In addition to the impact on caregivers as employees, workers, and family breadwinners, there is also a measurable impact on their personal health. As the Alzheimer's Association study noted, caregivers are more likely to be in poor health than the general population, and are three times more likely to suffer from depression, a condition that raises the risk of other ailments such as exhaustion, lowered immune function, stress-related illness, and injury related to their caregiving responsibilities. Compounding both the work-related and health-related problems, the burden of this kind of caregiving can increase over time. The Alzheimer's Association study noted that unlike caring for a child, which diminishes over time as the child matures and becomes more independent, caregiving responsibilities for an aging parent often increase as they become more dependent and require more care. Mr. President, failure to reform long-term care will also lead to cost shifting and will undermine our efforts both to contain acute care costs and further reduce the deficit. Thanks in large part to the lack of universal coverage and the attendant shared responsibility, the health care system has become expert at shifting costs. Federal and State policymakers, in attempting to control costs, have often only created bigger incentives to shift costs as they try to clamp down in one area only to see utilization jump in another. All too often, no real savings are achieved in the end. This was seen, for example, when the Federal Government changed several aspects of Medicare reimbursements. Patients were discharged from hospitals quicker and sicker than they had been before with a resulting increase in utilization in other areas, including long-term care services such as skilled nursing facilities. This example is particularly appropriate. As efforts are made to limit costs in the acute care system, it is precisely this kind of shifting, from the acute care side to the long-term care side, that will occur unless long-term care reforms are pursued. A grandmother who is discharged from a hospital by an HMO seeking to lower its costs, may have little alternative but to enter a nursing home. Long-term care reform could provide her family with sufficient additional supports to be able to care for that grandmother in her own home, and at significantly lower cost to the family and the system as a whole. But, Mr. President, as important as it is to gain control of our health care costs, long-term care reform is needed first and foremost as a matter of humanity. In my own State of Wisconsin, long-term care has been the focus of significant reforms since the early 1980's. One long-term care administrator, Chuck McLaughlin of Black River Falls, WI, testified before a field hearing of the Senate Aging Committee in the 103d Congress that prior to those reforms, he saw an almost complete absence of community or home-based long-term care services for people in need of support. This was especially visible for older disabled individuals. Except for those seniors with sufficient resources to create their own system of in-home supports, he saw many forced to enter nursing homes who would have liked to have remained in their own home or community. McLaughlin noted that though some eventually adjusted to leaving their home and entering the nursing home, others never did. I saw people who simply willed their own death because they saw no reason to continue living. These were people who were literally torn from familiar places and familiar people. People who had lost the continuity of their lives and the history that so richly made them into who they were now. People who had nurtured and sustained their communities which in turn provided them with positive status in that community. These people were truly uprooted and adrift in an alien environment lacking familiar sights, sounds, and smells. Many of them simply chose not to live any longer. While the medical care they received was excellent, they were more than just their physical bodies. Modern medicine has no treatment for a broken spirit. Mr. President, for many, the current long-term care system continues to be so inflexible as to be inhumane. Mr. President, there are many reasons for pursuing long-term care reform--certainly more than are addressed here. But the one which may be the most meaningful for those actually needing long-term care is the ability to make their own choice about what kinds of services they will receive. In particular, this will mean the chance to remain as independent as possible, living at home or in the community or, if they choose, in an institution. Survey after survey reveal the overwhelming preference for home-based care, and these findings are consistent with the anecdotal evidence available from just about every family facing some kind of long-term care need. Ann Hauser, a 74-year-old woman who retired after 30 years as a ward clerk in a Milwaukee hospital, offered testimony at a May 9, 1994, field hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging that is typical of what many have said over the years. Now living at home with help from Wisconsin's home and community- based long-term care program, the Community Options Program [COP], Ms. Hauser related a number of problems she had experienced while in different nursing homes. While at this nursing home and the others, I was to continue on IV antibiotics and needed some, but not total assistance for chair transfers. Before much time had passed, I was assisted in moving around so seldom that I lost muscle tone. Within 5 months, I became bedridden. The Heuer lift became a cop-out, and I learned that I was better to refuse it so that I would keep the use of some of my muscles. The less active I became, the more depressed I became. I was going downhill fast. How could I be happy in places that allowed the aides to switch the TV station on my television to their favorite soap operas (when I don't even like shows like that)? Furthermore, when I would remind them that I was at their mercy to finish my bed bath as they stopped to watch just one more minute, they would take away my remote control while I shivered and waited. The particulars of Ms. Hauser's experience are less important than the overall loss of control and independence that she experienced, something that is common for many in nursing homes. As Ms. Hauser noted: How could I thrive in an environment that counted on my remaining inactive when I had been so active until now? Dorothy Freund also gave testimony at the May 9 field hearing. At the time, she was a nursing home resident. Ms. Freund, who received her B.A. from Ohio State University, majored in English, and later received an additional degree from Maclean College of Drama, Speech, and Voice in Chicago. After a brief stay in a hospital for treatment to her ankle, she came to a nursing home for further treatment. She gave up her apartment, because it was not designed for maneuvering in a wheelchair, and she has been on the COP waiting list for a year and a half. Ms. Freund testified that she enjoys helping people, and this was obvious to those at the hearing as she related her efforts to tutor a nursing assistant who had worked at the nursing home. The aide decided that she would like to become a nurse, to get her LPN, but needed to get her high school diploma. Ms. Freund helped her with English, geometry, government, and geography, and, thanks in large part to Ms. Freund's efforts, the nursing assistant did receive her high school diploma. Ms. Freund spoke about her experience and her thoughts on living in a nursing home: Then why not stay at the nursing home and help others in the same way? It is not an atmosphere of peace and quiet for any length of time. I'm not deprecating the nursing home and its quality of care. They are always looking for ways to improve situations and to solve problems that arise. Nor am I downgrading those who are trying their best to give that care. But when the shouting, moaning, screaming, and babbling all go on at the same time it can be bedlam. It may erupt at any moment. . . . The frustrations of being stuffed in a nursing home, the struggle to ride out the storms, and keep one's head above the turbulent waters, can seem overwhelming when there's not even a gleam at the end of the tunnel. But I just can't resign myself to a life of Bingo and Roll-a-ball. ``Don't give up; there must be a way,'' I keep telling myself. Ms. Freund's testimony, again, is typical of the experiences of many needing long-term care. And it bears emphasizing that the desire to live in one's own home, and to be able to function as independently as possible, exists despite the high quality of care that is provided in most nursing homes. Mr. President, this should come as no surprise in a society that values independence so highly. We cannot expect an individual's value system to change the instant they require some long-term care, though this is precisely how our current long-term care system is structured. If for no other reason, we need to reform our long-term care system to reflect the values we cherish as a nation, to live, as we wish, independently, in our own homes and communities. Mr. President, during the debate over comprehensive health care reform in the 103d Congress, I issued a report reviewing the long-term care provisions in President Clinton's health care reform legislation and offering some modifications to those provisions based on our experience in Wisconsin. In that report, I noted that Chuck McLaughlin's eloquent comments on the importance of community were not only relevant, even central, to the discussion of long-term care, but that community must also be the focus of our efforts in many other areas of our lives as Americans and citizens of the world. More often than not, the critical problems we face stem from a failure of community or a lack of adequate community-based supports-- for example jobs and economic development, housing, crime, and education. These and other important issues are usually confronted by policymakers at a distance--from Washington, DC or from State capitals--essentially from the top down. Too often we have tried to solve these challenges, including the challenge of long-term care, by imposing a superior vision from above. This approach has led to inflexible systems that cannot react to individual needs, but rather end up trying to fit the problem to their own structure. This fundamental weakness is often enough to undermine even the sometimes huge amounts of money that we send along to implement the problem solving. It also limits the kinds of creative approaches those who are ``on the ground'' may see as useful and necessary. Mr. President, just as we have a need to reinvent government to respond more efficiently to our country's needs and our national deficit, we need also to reinvent community to allow flexible approaches to problems, and to allow those in the community to exercise their judgment as to how best to solve problems. A great strength of the Wisconsin long-term care reforms, and especially the home and community-based benefit on which this legislation is based, is that it is focused on the needs of the individual. Eligibility is based on disability, not age, and services are centered around the particular needs of an individual rather than the perceived needs of a group. The approach this legislation takes is not only appropriate, but integral to the nature of long-term care. Mr. President, the population needing long-term care services is a diverse group with widely differing needs. Of the many misconceptions about long-term care, and about programs providing long-term care services, the most common may be that long- term care is purely an elderly issue. Though it is true that the elderly make up the largest part of the population needing long-term care services, long-term care is an issue facing millions of younger Americans. Approximately 1 million children have severe disabilities that require long-term care services. Beyond the wide difference in the ages of those needing long-term care services, there is a diversity of needs, including the needs of the caregiving family members who may need a variety of different long- term care services. From individuals with cerebral palsy to families that have a loved one afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, however well intentioned, no one set of services will address the individual needs of long-term care consumers. Rather than trying to fit all of those needing long-term care services into one set of services, this legislation lets case managers, working with long-term care consumers and their families, determine just what services are needed and preferred. Mr. President, the failure to enact comprehensive reform will not interrupt my own efforts to advocate and push individual reforms that respond to the needs of people and that can help save our health care system money. In home and community-based long-term care reform, we can achieve both. For taxpayers in Wisconsin, COP has saved hundreds of millions of dollars that would otherwise have been spent on more expensive institutional care. At the same time, COP has provided an alternative that allows the consumer to participate in determining the plan of care and in the execution of that plan. But, Mr. President, at the Federal level we are behind Wisconsin and other States in reforming long-term care. Despite the creation of community-based Medicaid waiver programs, consumers are, for the most part, faced with few alternatives. This proposal will begin to provide the flexibility State government needs to provide consumer-oriented and consumer-directed services. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the measure, followed by the complete text of the legislation, be printed in the Record.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce S. 879, the Long-Term Care Reform and Deficit Reduction Act of 1997, legislation to reform fundamentally the way we provide long-term care in this country. This legislation gives States the flexibility to establish a system of consumer-oriented, consumer-directed home and community-based long- term care services for individuals with disabilities of any age. It does so while reducing the deficit by $30.4 billion over the next 5 years, and $145.7 billion over the next 10 years with the potential for even greater savings. Mr. President, the bill is based on Wisconsin's home and community- based long-term care program, the Community Options Program, called COP, which has been a national model of reform. COP was the keystone of Wisconsin's long-term care reforms that have saved Wisconsin taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The legislation is also similar, in large part, to the excellent bipartisan long-term care proposals developed by the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources as well as the Senate Committee on Finance during the 103d Congress, which in turn stemmed from the long-term care reforms included in President Clinton's health care reform proposal. Unlike so many other aspects of health care reform, the long-term care provisions that came out of the two Senate committees, that were included in the Mitchell compromise measure, and that were part of the proposals produced by the standing committees in the other body, received bipartisan support. It is somewhat remarkable that when there was so much controversy over so many issues relating to health care reform that there was so much agreement over the need to include long- term care reform. Mr. President, the success of the Wisconsin program upon which this measure is based stems in large part from its flexibility, a flexibility that benefits both individual consumers of long-term care as well as local administrators. This legislation reflects that same kind of flexibility. First and foremost, it does so by not creating a new, unfunded mandate. This program is entirely optional for States, and beyond four core services--assessment, care planning, personal assistance, and case management--those States choosing to participate will be free to decide what additional services, if any, they want to offer. States would be able but not required to offer such things as homemaker services, home modifications, respite, assistive devices, adult day care, supported employment, home health care, or any other service that would help keep a disabled individual at home or in the community. Equally important, the measure provides both some initial funding, and the ability of States to recapture the bulk of the savings they can generate within the current long-term care system. The bill directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit to Congress a proposal by which States could retain, in this new more flexible program, 75 percent of the Federal Medicaid long-term care savings they are able to generate. This not only provides a direct incentive for States to produce Medicaid savings, it also directly links the future of this reform to its ability to deliver results. The legislation also creates a small hospital link pilot program based on our experiences in Wisconsin where such an initiative has helped direct individuals needing long-term care services out of hospitals, and back to their own homes and communities. The hospital discharge is a critical point of embarkation into the long-term care system for many, and this program helps ensure that those who leave a hospital in need of long-term care can receive needed services where they prefer them--in their own homes. Mr. President, though I am convinced that long-term care reform can result in substantial savings to taxpayers--and this has been our experience in Wisconsin--this measure does not depend on hypothetical savings for funding. This measure includes funding provisions consisting of specific savings within the health care system. Those savings include extending and making permanent the Medicare secondary payer provisions; establishing a prospective payment system under Medicare for nursing homes; eliminating the technical errors in the reimbursement of certain outpatient hospital services, known as the formula-driven overpayments; and, reforming the way Medicare risk contractors are reimbursed. Mr. President, this last provision, fixing the payment system for Medicare HMO's, deserves special notice. The current system of reimbursement is flawed, and results in grossly inequitable distribution of costs and benefits within Medicare. Because the risk contract reimbursement formula is driven by the average fee-for-service costs in an area, Medicare beneficiaries in States like Wisconsin, where Medicare's standard fee-for-service costs are kept low, are punished. By contrast, areas with higher costs, including costs driven by unnecessary utilization and even waste, fraud, and abuse, are rewarded with generous benefit packages and little or no copayments. This system of incentives is backward, and I am pleased to include a proposal to bring some sense and equity to Medicare's reimbursement of risk contracts as part of this measure. Mr. President, the offsetting reductions in this measure produce savings of $34.1 billion over 5 years, and $166.2 billion over 10 years. Altogether, including the long-term care reforms and grants to States, the bill produces net deficit reduction of $30.4 billion over 5 years, and $145.7 billion over 10 years. This must be the approach we adopt, even for those proposals which experience shows will result in savings. By including funding provisions in this long-term care reform measure, we ensure that any additional savings produced by these reforms will only further reduce the budget deficit. And there is strong evidence that there will be additional savings, as we have seen in Wisconsin. Between 1980 and 1993, while the rest of the country experienced increased Medicaid nursing home use of 35 percent, thanks to Wisconsin's long-term care reforms, Medicaid nursing home bed use actually dropped 16 percent in the State, saving Wisconsin taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr. President, aside from the immediate benefits of reducing the budget deficit, we need long-term care reform in its own right. While the population of those needing long-term care is growing much faster than those providing indirect support as taxpayers, informal care, which is largely provided by families, has been stretched to the limit by the economics of health care and the increasing age of the caregivers themselves. The default system of formal long-term care, currently funded through the Medicaid Program, requires that individuals impoverish themselves before they can receive needed care, and it largely limits care to expensive institutional settings. Failure to reform long-term care will inevitably lead to increased use of the Medicaid system--the most expensive long-term care alternative for taxpayers, and the least desirable for consumers. Mr. President, there are few statistical forecasts as accurate as those dealing with our population, and estimates show that the population needing long-term care will explode during the next few decades. The elderly are the fastest growing segment of our population, with those over age 85--individuals most in need of long-term care--the fastest growing segment of the elderly. The over-85 population will triple in size between 1980 and 2030, and will be nearly seven times larger in 2050 than in 1980. The growth in the population of elderly needing some assistance is expected to be equally dramatic. Activities of daily living, or ADL's, are a common measure of need for long-term care services. These activities include eating, transferring in and out of bed, toileting, dressing, and bathing. In 1988, approximately 6.9 million elderly could not perform all of these activities. By 2000, this population is expected to increase to 9 million, and by 2040 to 18 million. Mr. President, that we have been able to stave off a long-term care crisis to date is due in large part to the direct caregiving provided by millions of families for their elderly and disabled family members. But here also we see that the demographic changes of the next several decades will result in increased strain on the current system. While the number of people in need of care is increasing rapidly, the population supporting those individuals, either through direct caregiving, or indirectly through their taxes, is growing much more slowly, and thus is shrinking in comparison. In 1900, there were about 7 elderly individuals for every 100 people of working age. As of 1990, the ratio was about 20 elderly for every 100, by 2020 the ratio will be 29 per 100, and after that it will rise to 38 per 100 by 2030. These population differences will be further aggravated by the changing nature of the family and the work force. As the Alzheimer's Association has noted, smaller families, delayed childbearing, more women in the work force, higher divorce rates, and increased mobility all mean there will be fewer primary caregivers available, and far less informal support for those who do continue to provide care to family members in need of long-term care services. Mr. President, while some elderly are relatively well off, thanks in part to programs like Social Security and Medicare that have kept many out of poverty, it is also true that too many seniors still find themselves living near or below the poverty line. This is especially true for those needing long-term care, who, on average, are poorer than those who do not need long-term care. In 1990, about 27 percent of people needing help with some activity of daily living survived on incomes below the poverty level, compared with 17 percent of all older people. About half of impaired elderly have income under 150 percent of poverty, compared with 35 percent of all elderly, and, according to Families USA, while 20 percent of the population as a whole had annual family income under $15,685 in 1992, nearly half of the disabled population had income under that level. Further aggravating the problem is that informal family member caregivers are getting older. These caregivers are already an average of 57, with 36 percent of caregivers 65 or older. As the population ages, so will the average age of caregivers, and as the population of caregivers increases, their ability to provide adequate informal care diminishes. Mr. President, all in all our country faces a rapidly growing population needing long-term care services, a population which is disproportionately poor. At the same time, the group of family caregivers, that has kept most of the population needing long-term care out of Government programs like Medicaid, is shrinking relative to those in need of services, and is becoming progressively older. The inescapable result of these trends is substantial pressure on Government provided long-term care services--services that are inadequate in several fundamental ways. First, with some exceptions, the current system fails to build effectively on the informal care provided by families. Mr. President, most people with disabilities, even with severe disabilities, rely on care in their home from family and friends. The Alzheimer's Association estimates that families provide between 80 and 90 percent of all care at home, willingly and without pay. The association estimates that this informal off-budget care would cost $54 billion to replace. This last figure can be only an estimate, not because it doesn't fairly represent the services currently being provided by family members, but because comparable services are largely unavailable from the long-term care system. The variety of home- and community-based services provided by family members simply do not exist in many areas. Mr. President, the prevalence of family-provided caregiving affirms that, in reforming our long-term care system, it is vital that we build on top of the existing informal care that is being provided, not try to substitute for that care by imposing a new system. The goal of long- term care reform is first to enable family caregivers to continue to provide the care they currently give and that their family members prefer. Mr. President, another weakness of the current long-term care system is the lack of a home and community service capacity. This is due in part to the inadequacies of the Medicaid Program. Enacted in 1965, Medicaid was primarily a response to the acute care needs of the poor. Though Congress did not envision Medicaid as a long-term care program, it quickly became the primary source of Government funds for long-term care services. For many years, those long-term services provided under Medicaid were almost exclusively institutionally based. Not until institutional services, such as nursing homes, had become well established were community- and home-based services funded. The result of the head start given institutional long-term care services has been a continuing bias toward institutions in our long- term care programs. The rate of nursing home use by the elderly since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid has doubled, while the community and home-based alternatives to institutional care are considered exceptions to institutional care. A State must get a waiver from the Federal Government in order to qualify for community and home-based nonmedical service alternatives under Medicaid and, in many cases, an individual must otherwise be headed to an institution in order to qualify for those Medicaid funded community and home-based alternative programs. More significantly, there remains an absolute entitlement to institutional care that does not exist for the home and community-based waiver alternatives. Mr. President, many families have been able to provide long-term care services themselves to their elderly and disabled family members, but the lack of even partial support services makes it increasingly difficult for families to choose to keep their family members at home. According to a 1991 Alzheimer's Association study, the family caregiving alternative to Government funded long-term care is likely to disappear not because of the increasing impairment of the long-term care consumer, but because of the physical, emotional, or financial exhaustion of the caregiver: Family caregivers suffer more stress-related illness, resulting from exhaustion, lowered immune functions, and injuries, than the general population . . . Depression among caregivers of the frail elderly is as high as 43 to 46 percent, nearly three times the norm. . . . The likelihood of health problems is heightened by the relatively high age of caregivers: the average is 57. Thirty-six percent of caregivers are 65 or older. Mr. President, the impact on the economy of the family caregiver is also significant. Beyond the obvious strain on the personal economy of those families with members needing long-term care services, there is also a significant effect on employers. One-quarter of American workers over the age of 30 care for an elderly parent, and this percentage is expected to increase with 40 percent of workers expecting to be caring for aging parents in the next 5 years. These are impressive statistics when one considers that caregivers report missing a week and a half of work each year in order to provide care, and nearly one-third of working caregivers have either quit their job or reduced their work hours because of their caregiving responsibilities. For those working 20 hours or fewer a week, over half have reduced their work hours because of caregiving responsibilities. Mr. President, long-term care is very much a woman's issue. Women live longer than men, and make up a greater portion of the population needing care. And women are much more likely to be the family member that is providing care to a loved one who needs long-term care. One in five women have a parent living in their home, and nearly half of adult daughters who are caregivers are unemployed. Over a quarter of these women said they either quit their jobs or retired early just to provide care for an older person. In addition to the impact on caregivers as employees, workers, and family breadwinners, there is also a measurable impact on their personal health. As the Alzheimer's Association study noted, caregivers are more likely to be in poor health than the general population, and are three times more likely to suffer from depression, a condition that raises the risk of other ailments such as exhaustion, lowered immune function, stress-related illness, and injury related to their caregiving responsibilities. Compounding both the work-related and health-related problems, the burden of this kind of caregiving can increase over time. The Alzheimer's Association study noted that unlike caring for a child, which diminishes over time as the child matures and becomes more independent, caregiving responsibilities for an aging parent often increase as they become more dependent and require more care. Mr. President, failure to reform long-term care will also lead to cost shifting and will undermine our efforts both to contain acute care costs and further reduce the deficit. Thanks in large part to the lack of universal coverage and the attendant shared responsibility, the health care system has become expert at shifting costs. Federal and State policymakers, in attempting to control costs, have often only created bigger incentives to shift costs as they try to clamp down in one area only to see utilization jump in another. All too often, no real savings are achieved in the end. This was seen, for example, when the Federal Government changed several aspects of Medicare reimbursements. Patients were discharged from hospitals quicker and sicker than they had been before with a resulting increase in utilization in other areas, including long-term care services such as skilled nursing facilities. This example is particularly appropriate. As efforts are made to limit costs in the acute care system, it is precisely this kind of shifting, from the acute care side to the long-term care side, that will occur unless long-term care reforms are pursued. A grandmother who is discharged from a hospital by an HMO seeking to lower its costs, may have little alternative but to enter a nursing home. Long-term care reform could provide her family with sufficient additional supports to be able to care for that grandmother in her own home, and at significantly lower cost to the family and the system as a whole. But, Mr. President, as important as it is to gain control of our health care costs, long-term care reform is needed first and foremost as a matter of humanity. In my own State of Wisconsin, long-term care has been the focus of significant reforms since the early 1980's. One long-term care administrator, Chuck McLaughlin of Black River Falls, WI, testified before a field hearing of the Senate Aging Committee in the 103d Congress that prior to those reforms, he saw an almost complete absence of community or home-based long-term care services for people in need of support. This was especially visible for older disabled individuals. Except for those seniors with sufficient resources to create their own system of in-home supports, he saw many forced to enter nursing homes who would have liked to have remained in their own home or community. McLaughlin noted that though some eventually adjusted to leaving their home and entering the nursing home, others never did. I saw people who simply willed their own death because they saw no reason to continue living. These were people who were literally torn from familiar places and familiar people. People who had lost the continuity of their lives and the history that so richly made them into who they were now. People who had nurtured and sustained their communities which in turn provided them with positive status in that community. These people were truly uprooted and adrift in an alien environment lacking familiar sights, sounds, and smells. Many of them simply chose not to live any longer. While the medical care they received was excellent, they were more than just their physical bodies. Modern medicine has no treatment for a broken spirit. Mr. President, for many, the current long-term care system continues to be so inflexible as to be inhumane. Mr. President, there are many reasons for pursuing long-term care reform--certainly more than are addressed here. But the one which may be the most meaningful for those actually needing long-term care is the ability to make their own choice about what kinds of services they will receive. In particular, this will mean the chance to remain as independent as possible, living at home or in the community or, if they choose, in an institution. Survey after survey reveal the overwhelming preference for home-based care, and these findings are consistent with the anecdotal evidence available from just about every family facing some kind of long-term care need. Ann Hauser, a 74-year-old woman who retired after 30 years as a ward clerk in a Milwaukee hospital, offered testimony at a May 9, 1994, field hearing of the Senate Special Committee on Aging that is typical of what many have said over the years. Now living at home with help from Wisconsin's home and community- based long-term care program, the Community Options Program [COP], Ms. Hauser related a number of problems she had experienced while in different nursing homes. While at this nursing home and the others, I was to continue on IV antibiotics and needed some, but not total assistance for chair transfers. Before much time had passed, I was assisted in moving around so seldom that I lost muscle tone. Within 5 months, I became bedridden. The Heuer lift became a cop-out, and I learned that I was better to refuse it so that I would keep the use of some of my muscles. The less active I became, the more depressed I became. I was going downhill fast. How could I be happy in places that allowed the aides to switch the TV station on my television to their favorite soap operas (when I don't even like shows like that)? Furthermore, when I would remind them that I was at their mercy to finish my bed bath as they stopped to watch just one more minute, they would take away my remote control while I shivered and waited. The particulars of Ms. Hauser's experience are less important than the overall loss of control and independence that she experienced, something that is common for many in nursing homes. As Ms. Hauser noted: How could I thrive in an environment that counted on my remaining inactive when I had been so active until now? Dorothy Freund also gave testimony at the May 9 field hearing. At the time, she was a nursing home resident. Ms. Freund, who received her B.A. from Ohio State University, majored in English, and later received an additional degree from Maclean College of Drama, Speech, and Voice in Chicago. After a brief stay in a hospital for treatment to her ankle, she came to a nursing home for further treatment. She gave up her apartment, because it was not designed for maneuvering in a wheelchair, and she has been on the COP waiting list for a year and a half. Ms. Freund testified that she enjoys helping people, and this was obvious to those at the hearing as she related her efforts to tutor a nursing assistant who had worked at the nursing home. The aide decided that she would like to become a nurse, to get her LPN, but needed to get her high school diploma. Ms. Freund helped her with English, geometry, government, and geography, and, thanks in large part to Ms. Freund's efforts, the nursing assistant did receive her high school diploma. Ms. Freund spoke about her experience and her thoughts on living in a nursing home: Then why not stay at the nursing home and help others in the same way? It is not an atmosphere of peace and quiet for any length of time. I'm not deprecating the nursing home and its quality of care. They are always looking for ways to improve situations and to solve problems that arise. Nor am I downgrading those who are trying their best to give that care. But when the shouting, moaning, screaming, and babbling all go on at the same time it can be bedlam. It may erupt at any moment. . . . The frustrations of being stuffed in a nursing home, the struggle to ride out the storms, and keep one's head above the turbulent waters, can seem overwhelming when there's not even a gleam at the end of the tunnel. But I just can't resign myself to a life of Bingo and Roll-a-ball. ``Don't give up; there must be a way,'' I keep telling myself. Ms. Freund's testimony, again, is typical of the experiences of many needing long-term care. And it bears emphasizing that the desire to live in one's own home, and to be able to function as independently as possible, exists despite the high quality of care that is provided in most nursing homes. Mr. President, this should come as no surprise in a society that values independence so highly. We cannot expect an individual's value system to change the instant they require some long-term care, though this is precisely how our current long-term care system is structured. If for no other reason, we need to reform our long-term care system to reflect the values we cherish as a nation, to live, as we wish, independently, in our own homes and communities. Mr. President, during the debate over comprehensive health care reform in the 103d Congress, I issued a report reviewing the long-term care provisions in President Clinton's health care reform legislation and offering some modifications to those provisions based on our experience in Wisconsin. In that report, I noted that Chuck McLaughlin's eloquent comments on the importance of community were not only relevant, even central, to the discussion of long-term care, but that community must also be the focus of our efforts in many other areas of our lives as Americans and citizens of the world. More often than not, the critical problems we face stem from a failure of community or a lack of adequate community-based supports-- for example jobs and economic development, housing, crime, and education. These and other important issues are usually confronted by policymakers at a distance--from Washington, DC or from State capitals--essentially from the top down. Too often we have tried to solve these challenges, including the challenge of long-term care, by imposing a superior vision from above. This approach has led to inflexible systems that cannot react to individual needs, but rather end up trying to fit the problem to their own structure. This fundamental weakness is often enough to undermine even the sometimes huge amounts of money that we send along to implement the problem solving. It also limits the kinds of creative approaches those who are ``on the ground'' may see as useful and necessary. Mr. President, just as we have a need to reinvent government to respond more efficiently to our country's needs and our national deficit, we need also to reinvent community to allow flexible approaches to problems, and to allow those in the community to exercise their judgment as to how best to solve problems. A great strength of the Wisconsin long-term care reforms, and especially the home and community-based benefit on which this legislation is based, is that it is focused on the needs of the individual. Eligibility is based on disability, not age, and services are centered around the particular needs of an individual rather than the perceived needs of a group. The approach this legislation takes is not only appropriate, but integral to the nature of long-term care. Mr. President, the population needing long-term care services is a diverse group with widely differing needs. Of the many misconceptions about long-term care, and about programs providing long-term care services, the most common may be that long- term care is purely an elderly issue. Though it is true that the elderly make up the largest part of the population needing long-term care services, long-term care is an issue facing millions of younger Americans. Approximately 1 million children have severe disabilities that require long-term care services. Beyond the wide difference in the ages of those needing long-term care services, there is a diversity of needs, including the needs of the caregiving family members who may need a variety of different long- term care services. From individuals with cerebral palsy to families that have a loved one afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, however well intentioned, no one set of services will address the individual needs of long-term care consumers. Rather than trying to fit all of those needing long-term care services into one set of services, this legislation lets case managers, working with long-term care consumers and their families, determine just what services are needed and preferred. Mr. President, the failure to enact comprehensive reform will not interrupt my own efforts to advocate and push individual reforms that respond to the needs of people and that can help save our health care system money. In home and community-based long-term care reform, we can achieve both. For taxpayers in Wisconsin, COP has saved hundreds of millions of dollars that would otherwise have been spent on more expensive institutional care. At the same time, COP has provided an alternative that allows the consumer to participate in determining the plan of care and in the execution of that plan. But, Mr. President, at the Federal level we are behind Wisconsin and other States in reforming long-term care. Despite the creation of community-based Medicaid waiver programs, consumers are, for the most part, faced with few alternatives. This proposal will begin to provide the flexibility State government needs to provide consumer-oriented and consumer-directed services. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a summary of the measure, followed by the complete text of the legislation, be printed in the Record.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to join with my friend, the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], in marking the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's historic speech on nuclear disarmament. It was in that speech, given June 10, 1963, at American University, that President Kennedy announced the initiation of negotiations for a comprehensive ban on nuclear tests. I am pleased to see that now, 34 years later, a comprehensive test ban is on the verge of becoming reality. I am a strong supporter of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty [CTBT] as a way to curtail nuclear proliferation. This treaty, once it is ratified by the 44 actual or potential nuclear powers, will ban all nuclear explosions no matter how small. In 1993, I cosponsored legislation that extended our moratorium on nuclear tests and called on the United States to end all testing by the year 1996. That bill passed and the United States' unilateral move to stop testing has shown our commitment to a worldwide ban on nuclear explosions. As we all know, the CTBT won approval in the U.N. General Assembly last September and, just days after the U.N. vote, President Clinton signed the treaty on behalf of the United States. More than 100 other nuclear and nonnuclear states have also signed the CTBT. Mr. President, the CTBT will act as an essential complement to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and will help end the threat of nuclear war. By prohibiting nonnuclear states from developing atomic weapons, the Non-Proliferation Treaty has greatly enhanced global security since it was first signed back in 1968. The CTBT, by prohibiting nuclear testing, will provide further assurance that no additional states will develop nuclear weapons. The world will undoubtedly be a safer place once all nuclear explosions, even underground ones, are permanently outlawed. Since President Kennedy first initiated test ban negotiations, the United States has taken the leading role in ending nuclear testing. We must maintain this momentum. I urge the President to submit the CTBT to the Senate for its advice and consent at the earliest possible date and then I would hope the Foreign Relations Committee would take it up for consideration soon thereafter. The United States should continue its leadership by ratifying the CTBT. We should demonstrate that our commitment to a nuclear test ban is as strong as ever.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to draw the Senate's attention to the parliamentary elections that took place in Indonesia last Thursday, May 29. Actually, it does not seem accurate to call this event an election since the polling was conducted amid worsening political repression and human rights abuses by the Indonesian Government. As in past elections, all candidates were prescreened and new political parties banned. Individuals who posed even the slightest challenge to President Suharto's power were not allowed to participate. We cannot mistake this process for a real election. Rather, it was a pitiful example of a brutal authoritarian Government attempting to masquerade as a democracy. Clearly many in Indonesia are angry about not having a voice. This latest election was the most violent in 30 years. Rampant corruption among Indonesia's ruling elite and continued high unemployment have created a deep vein of discontent. Yet Indonesians are given no choice other than Suharto, who already has ruled Indonesia for more than three decades. Mr. President, the human rights situation in Indonesia remains as bad as ever. Five demonstrators were killed by troops last July after the Government engineered an attack on the office of an opposition party. In addition to the 5 dead, 23 protestors are still missing. Also last summer, labor leader Muchtar Pakpahan was arrested on trumped-up sedition charges. Mr. Pakpahan's only crime was to demand democracy, respect for human rights, and decent labor conditions. The State Department's 1996 human rights report indicates that prisoners like Mr. Pakpahan frequently die at the hands of their interrogators. The report states that Indonesian ``security forces continue to employ torture and other forms of mistreatment, particularly in regions where there were active security concerns, such as Irian Jaya, and East Timor. Police often resort to physical abuse, even in minor incidents.'' Indeed, the human rights situation in East Timor continues to be a matter of great concern. Since last Tuesday, as many as 41 people--both East Timorese citizens and Indonesian soldiers--have died in election- related violence. Unfortunately, such killings are a part of daily life in East Timor. Human rights monitors estimate that as many as 200,000 East Timorese have died under the Indonesian regime. Two hundred thousand. That represents a full third of East Timor's population before Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony back in 1975. On the day before Indonesia's election, East Timorese activist and co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize Jose Ramos-Horta visited Washington. Mr. Ramos-Horta carried with him graphic evidence of human rights abuses that have occurred in East Timor in the last few months, evidence that includes disturbing photographs of Indonesian military officers torturing East Timorese detainees with electric shocks and lit cigarettes. In his statement on the elections, Mr. Ramos-Horta notes that the unrest in East Timor is now spreading into Indonesia as people grow more frustrated with the existing political system. According to Mr. Ramos-Horta ``a spiral of violence can be anticipated for Indonesia from now on as dissent grows. It will be met with the customary repression by the military-backed regime, now increasingly desperate as its grip on power begins to slip, leading to an extended period of instability, disruption to peace and much human suffering.'' I agree that the violence in Indonesia will only subside after President Suharto initiates real democratic change and, for example, allows all parties to compete equally in the political process. However, like their counterparts in China, Indonesian authorities try to argue that greater democracy will lead to instability which in turn will impede economic development. I fundamentally reject this idea. Clearly, with so many Indonesians venting their anger against the present regime, the problem is not too much democracy, but too little. Just because President Suharto's government has boosted economic growth does not mean it has the right to murder and torture Indonesians and East Timorese. Mr. President, the events of last week only further my discomfort regarding United States policy in Indonesia. As you know, the United States has supplied Indonesia with military training and weapons. Rather than aid Indonesia's military, we should encourage the democratic forces within Indonesian society. As a world leader with great influence in Jakarta, the United States should work to convince Indonesia's leaders that holding real elections, the kind that give people a true say in how they are governed, is a sign of national strength, not weakness.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to join in marking the eighth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, a tragic day when a still unknown number of Chinese--some say hundreds, others thousands--died at the hands of the People's Liberation Army. This anniversary is significant because it is the first since the death of China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, the man who orchestrated the bloody crackdown against the pro-democracy movement. Unfortunately, even with Deng out of the picture, the Chinese Communist Party remains unwilling to re-examine the events of June 4, 1989. Indeed, China's leaders would like nothing more than to have Tiananmen fade from the world's memory. But Tiananmen is still very much a part of the present. As all of us are aware, Wang Dan, a student leader of Tiananmen, was sent back to prison last October for continuing to advocate democratic reform. According to Amnesty International, 303 people remain in prison for their role in the 1989 demonstrations. Certainly for these people and their families, Tiananmen remains a part of daily life. Today, Tiananmen is still very much on the minds of Hong Kong's people. The 1989 prodemocracy demonstrations created an outpouring of support from the British colony. Hong Kong residents donated hundreds of tents and sleeping bags to the students occupying Tiananmen Square. Thousands are expected to gather this evening in Hong Kong's Victoria Park for a candlelight vigil. Many are worried that public observance of Tiananmen will be banned once Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule this summer. After the transfer of Hong Kong is completed, commemoration of June 4 will become the ultimate test of whether China will allow Hong Kong to maintain its cherished freedoms. For those of us who are concerned about human rights in China, June 4 is still a powerful reminder that the Chinese Government has not changed. I was appalled to hear that, during his visit to Washington last December, China's Defense Minister Chi Haotian said that ``not a single person lost their life in Tiananmen Square.'' That was an insult to the memory of those who died on the streets of Beijing that night. Mr. President, yesterday Senator Helms and I submitted a resolution of disapproval of the President's decision to renew most-favored-nation trade privileges to China. I feel strongly that the decision in 1994 to delink human rights and MFN was a mistake. Disconnecting the two has helped make China's leaders feel secure enough to renew their crackdown on the democracy movement and commit further human rights atrocities in Tibet. I believe that denying MFN is the best way to communicate to the leadership in Beijing that the United States still values human rights. It is the best way to tell the Chinese Government that we will not forget Tiananmen.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee [Mr. Helms] and I have today introduced a joint resolution of disapproval for the President's decision to extend most- favored-nation status to China. This is third year in a row that I will be introducing this joint resolution, and--I am pleased to say--the second time with Senator Helms. I have joined with the chairman once again because I believe that trade policy is an effective tool that the United States can and should use with respect to the Chinese Government. I am pleased that Senators Wellstone and Hutchinson of Arkansas have joined us in introducing this bipartisan resolution. Mr. President, on May 19, President Clinton announced his intention to extend for another year most-favored-nation trading status to China, which he formally requested from the Congress last week. Although we have expected the President to make such a decision for some time now, I can only say that I am once again disappointed in the President's decision. In fact, I have objected to the President's policy regarding the extension of MFN status to China since 1994, when he de-linked the issue of human rights from our trading policy. The argument made then is that trade rights and human rights are not interrelated. At the same time, it was said, through ``constructive engagement'' on economic matters, and dialogue on other issues, including human rights, the United States could better influence the behavior of the Chinese Government. That was a mistake. Let those who support ``constructive engagement'' visit the terribly ill Wei Jingsheng in his prison cell, and ask him if developing markets for toothpaste or breakfast cereal will help him win his freedom or save his life. I do not see how closer economic ties alone will somehow transform China's authoritarian system into a more democratic one. Unless we press the case for improvement in China's human rights record, using the leverage afforded us by the Chinese Government's desire to expand its economy and increase trade with us, I do not see how conditions will get much better. De-linking MFN has resulted only in the continued despair of millions of Chinese people, and there is no evidence that MFN has influenced Beijing to improve its human rights policies. Basic freedoms--of expression, of religion, of association--are routinely denied. Rule of law, at least as I would define it, does not exist. Mr. President, shortly before the Memorial Day recess, the Foreign Relations Committee held several hearings on the current situation in China. We had, for example, an excellent hearing on the situation in Tibet, where China continues its cultural and political repression and still refuses to begin a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, a Nobel laureate. We also heard testimony about how China is not sticking to its commitments under a 1992 Memorandum of Understanding with the United States on the issue of the use of forced prison labor. It is unconscionable that American consumers have unwittingly been used to help finance the abhorrent Chinese policy of reform through labor. And that is not all. Virtually every review of the behavior of the Chinese Government over the past year demonstrates that not only has there been no improvement in the human rights situation in China, but in many cases, it has worsened. Now, 3 years after the President's decision to de-link MFN from human rights, the State Department's most recent Human Rights report on China describes, once again, an abysmal situation. According to the report, The Government continued to commit widespread and well- documented human rights abuses, in violation of internationally accepted norms, stemming from the authorities' intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest, and the absence or inadequacy of laws protecting basic freedoms. . . . Abuses included torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, and arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention. Prison conditions remained harsh. The Government continued severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, privacy, and worker rights. In October 1996, we were witness to yet another example of these policies, when Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. This was, of course, after he had already been held in incommunicado detention for 17 months in connection with the issuance of a pro-democracy petition. Many political prisoners--some whose names we know, like Mr. Wang and Mr. Wei, and many of whose names we do not-- have become ill as a result of their prolonged incarcerations, and are not receiving proper medical care. The past year also saw the December arrest of Ngawang Choepel, a Tibetan musicologist and former Fulbright scholar who was the subject of a recent Moynihan resolution that I was proud to cosponsor. Also in December, a Beijing court sentenced activist Li Hai for collecting information on Tiananmen activists in prison. Li was trying to compile a list giving the name, age, family situation, crime, length of sentence, and the location of the prison in which these activists were held. In June 1996, university teacher Zhang Zong-ai was arrested and later sentenced for meeting with Wang Dan and writing to Taiwanese leaders. Earlier this year, reports emerged from Tibet indicating severe torture of Tibetan nuns allegedly involved in separatist activities. Freedom of expression is curtailed by other means as well. Although the government has recently encouraged the expansion of the Internet and other communications infrastructure, it requires Internet users to register and sign a pledge not to endanger security. Selected web sites, like those from news organizations based in Hong Kong and Taiwan, or those hosted by dissidents, are blocked by the government, and authorities continue to jam Voice of America broadcasts. Mr. President, Beijing's contempt for United States values is evident in many fora: in the loathsome compulsory one-child family planning program, in the increased incidence of religious persecution, in the sales of nuclear equipment to Pakistan or missiles to Iran, and in China's utter disregard for agreements to end violations of United States intellectual property rights. Lack of progress in these areas flies in the face of the United States policy of ``constructive engagement,'' with respect to China. In my view--and I know that Senator Helms agrees with me here--it is impossible to come to any other conclusion except that ``constructive engagement'' has failed to make any change in Beijing's human rights behavior. I would say that the evidence justifies the exact opposite conclusion: human rights have deteriorated and the regime continues to act recklessly in other areas vital to U.S. national interest. At the May 13, 1997, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on The Situation of Tibet and its People, Dr. Robert Thurman, a renowned expert in Tibetan culture who has traveled to the region numerous times over the past 35 years, presented compelling testimony about the Chinese Government's intentions toward the Tibetan people. Dr. Thurman explained quite clearly that, ``It is a calculated policy consistent [of the] Chinese Government . . . to eradicate those who might some day claim the land of Tibet back to them.'' In order to achieve this goal, Dr. Thurman explained, the Chinese Government engages in all kinds of activities to destroy Tibetan culture, Tibetan religion and Tibetan identity, and in so doing, attempts to assimilate Tibetans into the Chinese way of life. But what was most striking about Dr. Thurman's testimony was his description of the behavior of the Chinese Government over the past 3 years, and in particular, Beijing's reaction to United States trade policy. Mr. President, allow me to read from his oral testimony: It is definitely a fact that anyone who goes to Tibet regularly--and I have been there eight times--anyone who goes there regularly will tell you that since 1994, when our Executive Branch misguidedly delinked . . . trade privileges from the Chinese behavior, the Chinese behavior accelerated in a negative direction to an extreme degree. Since 1994, the complete oppression of Tibetan religion and the Tibetan national identity has been reembarked upon by the recent and current administration in China. From 1994 to 1997, their policy has returned to being completely genocidal, no longer pretending even to tolerate Tibetan religion. . . . They have expelled many monks from monasteries. They have closed important monasteries. . . . [The Chinese] will never abandon [Tibet] when they feel we have no real will to do anything serious no matter what they do. . . . This has been proven in religious terms . . . in the last three years, since 1994. Once you delinked the money from their treatment of human rights, from their treatment of religion in Tibet, they just went and completely abused everything totally. They undid all sorts of liberties that had been allowed in the 1980s, in fact. They completely have undone them. So, Mr. President, we have here compelling testimony of my main argument: that the delinking of trade privileges from human rights issues has actually led to a worsening of the human rights situation in China. Perhaps equally disturbing, China continues to violate agreements with the United States on other issues. Violations of agreements on intellectual property rights cost U.S. firms an estimated $1.8 billion annually. Violations of the memorandum of understanding on prison labor, according to some estimates, have resulted in millions of dollars worth of tainted goods being imported into our country. And China's blatant disregard for international efforts to control nuclear proliferation cost us unimaginable sums in future international security. We have so few levers that we can use against China. And if China is accepted by the international community as a superpower under the current conditions, it will believe it can continue to abuse human rights with impunity. The more we ignore the signals and allow trade to dictate our policy, the worse we can expect the human rights situation to become. We know that putting pressure on the Chinese Government can have some impact. China released dissident Harry Wu from prison when his case threatened to disrupt the First Lady's trip to Beijing for the U.N. Conference on Women, and it similarly released both Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan around the same time that China was pushing to have the 2000 Olympic Games in Beijing. After losing that bid, and once the spotlight was off, the Chinese government rearrested both Wei and Wang. Examples such as this only affirm my belief that the United States should make it clear that human rights are of real--as opposed to rhetorical--concern to this country. Until Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan, and others committed to reform in China are allowed to speak their voices freely and work for change, United States-China relations should not be based on a business-as-usual basis. Last Sunday, Fred Hiatt illustrated this point in a Washington Post editorial called The Skyscraper and the Bookstore. In recalling the 1993 tour of Beijing that Chinese leaders offered to Mr. Wei after he had been in prison for 14 years, Hiatt wonders whether the skyscraper, a powerful symbol of Western-style economic modernization, or a bookstore, in which Wei found little literary diversity, is the more significant portent for China's future. Hiatt's point is that the more the United States focuses on its trade and economic relations with China, the more skyscrapers might be built in Beijing. But despite massive urban development, there has not been massive development in the most basic freedoms of expression and ideas. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of Hiatt's June 1, 1997, Washington Post op-ed be included in the Record. Mr. President, this year--1997--is perhaps the most important year since 1989 with respect to our relationship with the Chinese Government. In less than 1 month, Hong Kong will revert to China, and already there are fears of what the transition may mean for democratic liberties in that city. There may also be significant developments with respect to China's desire to join the World Trade Organization. And of course, there are the myriad other issues I have already mentioned. But even with all that is going on, the United States and others in the international community failed to pass a resolution regarding China at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights earlier this year largely because China lobbied hard to prevent it. That failure proves that it is even more important for the United States to use the levers that we do have to pressure China's leaders. Mr. President, if moral outrage at blatant abuse of human rights is not reason enough for taking a tough stance with China--and I believe it is and that the American people do as well--then let us do so on grounds of real political and economic self-interest. We must not forget that we currently have a trade deficit of nearly $40 billion. Forty billion dollars. Political considerations aside, such a deficit represents a formidable obstacle to developing normal trading relations with China at any point in the near future. Plus, China is becoming more and more dangerously involved in nefarious arms dealings with Iran and Pakistan. But, Mr. President, my main objective today is to push for the United States to once again make the link between human rights and trading relations with respect to our policy in China. As I have said before, I believe that trade--embodied by the peculiar annual exercise of MFN renewal--is one of the most powerful levers we have, and that it was a mistake for the President to de-link this exercise from human rights considerations. So, Mr. President, for those who care about human rights, about freedom of religion, and about America's moral leadership in the world, I urge support for the Helms-Feingold resolution disapproving the President's decision to renew most-favored-nation status for China.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee [Mr. Helms] and I have today introduced a joint resolution of disapproval for the President's decision to extend most- favored-nation status to China. This is third year in a row that I will be introducing this joint resolution, and--I am pleased to say--the second time with Senator Helms. I have joined with the chairman once again because I believe that trade policy is an effective tool that the United States can and should use with respect to the Chinese Government. I am pleased that Senators Wellstone and Hutchinson of Arkansas have joined us in introducing this bipartisan resolution. Mr. President, on May 19, President Clinton announced his intention to extend for another year most-favored-nation trading status to China, which he formally requested from the Congress last week. Although we have expected the President to make such a decision for some time now, I can only say that I am once again disappointed in the President's decision. In fact, I have objected to the President's policy regarding the extension of MFN status to China since 1994, when he de-linked the issue of human rights from our trading policy. The argument made then is that trade rights and human rights are not interrelated. At the same time, it was said, through ``constructive engagement'' on economic matters, and dialogue on other issues, including human rights, the United States could better influence the behavior of the Chinese Government. That was a mistake. Let those who support ``constructive engagement'' visit the terribly ill Wei Jingsheng in his prison cell, and ask him if developing markets for toothpaste or breakfast cereal will help him win his freedom or save his life. I do not see how closer economic ties alone will somehow transform China's authoritarian system into a more democratic one. Unless we press the case for improvement in China's human rights record, using the leverage afforded us by the Chinese Government's desire to expand its economy and increase trade with us, I do not see how conditions will get much better. De-linking MFN has resulted only in the continued despair of millions of Chinese people, and there is no evidence that MFN has influenced Beijing to improve its human rights policies. Basic freedoms--of expression, of religion, of association--are routinely denied. Rule of law, at least as I would define it, does not exist. Mr. President, shortly before the Memorial Day recess, the Foreign Relations Committee held several hearings on the current situation in China. We had, for example, an excellent hearing on the situation in Tibet, where China continues its cultural and political repression and still refuses to begin a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, a Nobel laureate. We also heard testimony about how China is not sticking to its commitments under a 1992 Memorandum of Understanding with the United States on the issue of the use of forced prison labor. It is unconscionable that American consumers have unwittingly been used to help finance the abhorrent Chinese policy of reform through labor. And that is not all. Virtually every review of the behavior of the Chinese Government over the past year demonstrates that not only has there been no improvement in the human rights situation in China, but in many cases, it has worsened. Now, 3 years after the President's decision to de-link MFN from human rights, the State Department's most recent Human Rights report on China describes, once again, an abysmal situation. According to the report, The Government continued to commit widespread and well- documented human rights abuses, in violation of internationally accepted norms, stemming from the authorities' intolerance of dissent, fear of unrest, and the absence or inadequacy of laws protecting basic freedoms. . . . Abuses included torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, and arbitrary and lengthy incommunicado detention. Prison conditions remained harsh. The Government continued severe restrictions on freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, privacy, and worker rights. In October 1996, we were witness to yet another example of these policies, when Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. This was, of course, after he had already been held in incommunicado detention for 17 months in connection with the issuance of a pro-democracy petition. Many political prisoners--some whose names we know, like Mr. Wang and Mr. Wei, and many of whose names we do not-- have become ill as a result of their prolonged incarcerations, and are not receiving proper medical care. The past year also saw the December arrest of Ngawang Choepel, a Tibetan musicologist and former Fulbright scholar who was the subject of a recent Moynihan resolution that I was proud to cosponsor. Also in December, a Beijing court sentenced activist Li Hai for collecting information on Tiananmen activists in prison. Li was trying to compile a list giving the name, age, family situation, crime, length of sentence, and the location of the prison in which these activists were held. In June 1996, university teacher Zhang Zong-ai was arrested and later sentenced for meeting with Wang Dan and writing to Taiwanese leaders. Earlier this year, reports emerged from Tibet indicating severe torture of Tibetan nuns allegedly involved in separatist activities. Freedom of expression is curtailed by other means as well. Although the government has recently encouraged the expansion of the Internet and other communications infrastructure, it requires Internet users to register and sign a pledge not to endanger security. Selected web sites, like those from news organizations based in Hong Kong and Taiwan, or those hosted by dissidents, are blocked by the government, and authorities continue to jam Voice of America broadcasts. Mr. President, Beijing's contempt for United States values is evident in many fora: in the loathsome compulsory one-child family planning program, in the increased incidence of religious persecution, in the sales of nuclear equipment to Pakistan or missiles to Iran, and in China's utter disregard for agreements to end violations of United States intellectual property rights. Lack of progress in these areas flies in the face of the United States policy of ``constructive engagement,'' with respect to China. In my view--and I know that Senator Helms agrees with me here--it is impossible to come to any other conclusion except that ``constructive engagement'' has failed to make any change in Beijing's human rights behavior. I would say that the evidence justifies the exact opposite conclusion: human rights have deteriorated and the regime continues to act recklessly in other areas vital to U.S. national interest. At the May 13, 1997, Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on The Situation of Tibet and its People, Dr. Robert Thurman, a renowned expert in Tibetan culture who has traveled to the region numerous times over the past 35 years, presented compelling testimony about the Chinese Government's intentions toward the Tibetan people. Dr. Thurman explained quite clearly that, ``It is a calculated policy consistent [of the] Chinese Government . . . to eradicate those who might some day claim the land of Tibet back to them.'' In order to achieve this goal, Dr. Thurman explained, the Chinese Government engages in all kinds of activities to destroy Tibetan culture, Tibetan religion and Tibetan identity, and in so doing, attempts to assimilate Tibetans into the Chinese way of life. But what was most striking about Dr. Thurman's testimony was his description of the behavior of the Chinese Government over the past 3 years, and in particular, Beijing's reaction to United States trade policy. Mr. President, allow me to read from his oral testimony: It is definitely a fact that anyone who goes to Tibet regularly--and I have been there eight times--anyone who goes there regularly will tell you that since 1994, when our Executive Branch misguidedly delinked . . . trade privileges from the Chinese behavior, the Chinese behavior accelerated in a negative direction to an extreme degree. Since 1994, the complete oppression of Tibetan religion and the Tibetan national identity has been reembarked upon by the recent and current administration in China. From 1994 to 1997, their policy has returned to being completely genocidal, no longer pretending even to tolerate Tibetan religion. . . . They have expelled many monks from monasteries. They have closed important monasteries. . . . [The Chinese] will never abandon [Tibet] when they feel we have no real will to do anything serious no matter what they do. . . . This has been proven in religious terms . . . in the last three years, since 1994. Once you delinked the money from their treatment of human rights, from their treatment of religion in Tibet, they just went and completely abused everything totally. They undid all sorts of liberties that had been allowed in the 1980s, in fact. They completely have undone them. So, Mr. President, we have here compelling testimony of my main argument: that the delinking of trade privileges from human rights issues has actually led to a worsening of the human rights situation in China. Perhaps equally disturbing, China continues to violate agreements with the United States on other issues. Violations of agreements on intellectual property rights cost U.S. firms an estimated $1.8 billion annually. Violations of the memorandum of understanding on prison labor, according to some estimates, have resulted in millions of dollars worth of tainted goods being imported into our country. And China's blatant disregard for international efforts to control nuclear proliferation cost us unimaginable sums in future international security. We have so few levers that we can use against China. And if China is accepted by the international community as a superpower under the current conditions, it will believe it can continue to abuse human rights with impunity. The more we ignore the signals and allow trade to dictate our policy, the worse we can expect the human rights situation to become. We know that putting pressure on the Chinese Government can have some impact. China released dissident Harry Wu from prison when his case threatened to disrupt the First Lady's trip to Beijing for the U.N. Conference on Women, and it similarly released both Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan around the same time that China was pushing to have the 2000 Olympic Games in Beijing. After losing that bid, and once the spotlight was off, the Chinese government rearrested both Wei and Wang. Examples such as this only affirm my belief that the United States should make it clear that human rights are of real--as opposed to rhetorical--concern to this country. Until Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan, and others committed to reform in China are allowed to speak their voices freely and work for change, United States-China relations should not be based on a business-as-usual basis. Last Sunday, Fred Hiatt illustrated this point in a Washington Post editorial called The Skyscraper and the Bookstore. In recalling the 1993 tour of Beijing that Chinese leaders offered to Mr. Wei after he had been in prison for 14 years, Hiatt wonders whether the skyscraper, a powerful symbol of Western-style economic modernization, or a bookstore, in which Wei found little literary diversity, is the more significant portent for China's future. Hiatt's point is that the more the United States focuses on its trade and economic relations with China, the more skyscrapers might be built in Beijing. But despite massive urban development, there has not been massive development in the most basic freedoms of expression and ideas. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of Hiatt's June 1, 1997, Washington Post op-ed be included in the Record. Mr. President, this year--1997--is perhaps the most important year since 1989 with respect to our relationship with the Chinese Government. In less than 1 month, Hong Kong will revert to China, and already there are fears of what the transition may mean for democratic liberties in that city. There may also be significant developments with respect to China's desire to join the World Trade Organization. And of course, there are the myriad other issues I have already mentioned. But even with all that is going on, the United States and others in the international community failed to pass a resolution regarding China at the United Nations Commission on Human Rights earlier this year largely because China lobbied hard to prevent it. That failure proves that it is even more important for the United States to use the levers that we do have to pressure China's leaders. Mr. President, if moral outrage at blatant abuse of human rights is not reason enough for taking a tough stance with China--and I believe it is and that the American people do as well--then let us do so on grounds of real political and economic self-interest. We must not forget that we currently have a trade deficit of nearly $40 billion. Forty billion dollars. Political considerations aside, such a deficit represents a formidable obstacle to developing normal trading relations with China at any point in the near future. Plus, China is becoming more and more dangerously involved in nefarious arms dealings with Iran and Pakistan. But, Mr. President, my main objective today is to push for the United States to once again make the link between human rights and trading relations with respect to our policy in China. As I have said before, I believe that trade--embodied by the peculiar annual exercise of MFN renewal--is one of the most powerful levers we have, and that it was a mistake for the President to de-link this exercise from human rights considerations. So, Mr. President, for those who care about human rights, about freedom of religion, and about America's moral leadership in the world, I urge support for the Helms-Feingold resolution disapproving the President's decision to renew most-favored-nation status for China.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, recently, the distinguished Senior Senator from Wisconsin [Mr. Kohl] and I, along with our colleague from the House of Representatives, Representative Thomas Petri, wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, the Honorable John H. Dalton, indicating our strong support for the proposal to name the third Seawolf class submarine the Manitowoc, recognizing the unique contribution by the city of Manitowoc, WI, to the development of U.S. submarine superiority in World War II. The Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. produced 28 submarines during World War II--roughly ten percent of America's submarine fleet during that war. The 25 Manitowoc-built submarines in the Pacific theater sank 132 enemy ships. Prior to World War II, the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. had never produced submarines. As America entered the war, and the Nation committed its resources and energies to the effort, this shipbuilding company took on the task of retooling, retraining its employees, and restructuring its facilities to produce high-quality submarines at a wartime pace. They completed production of the submarines 19 months ahead of schedule and $1.8 million under budget. In all, some 7,000 people were employed at the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Co. at the height of World War II production, many working numerous nonstop shifts. Many also came from other cities and towns and the Manitowoc community opened up its arms to support these workers, giving them a home-away from home, which helped to maintain the morale of these essential workers in the war effort. I am pleased to note that the Wisconsin State Senate has just passed a measure urging the Navy to name the new submarine the Manitowoc. Naming the new sub the Manitowoc would honor those who served on the Manitowoc-built subs, those individuals who worked 24 hours a day to build them, and the city which extended its support to the Herculean production effort. It would be a fitting tribute.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, this is a notable occasion. We are adopting a bipartisan budget plan, an uncommon event, made even more exceptional because that plan outlines a path toward achieving balance in the unified budget. As others have noted, this budget resolution is not perfect. No one of us would have proposed precisely the same combination of provisions we have in this resolution, that is the nature of political compromise. The result, however, is a package of provisions that does provide the opportunity to reach balance. Mr. President, balancing our budget has been my highest priority as a Member of this body. I ran on that issue in 1992, and I am pleased that we will enact a budget outline that puts us on track to achieve that goal. Mr. President, it is important to note that this agreement would not have been possible without the President's deficit reduction package enacted in 1993. Some now estimate that package achieved approximately $2 trillion in deficit reduction between 1993 and 2002. By contrast, the deficit reduction achieved in this year's budget outline is much smaller, but it is still an important accomplishment. Mr. President, I think it also needs to be said this important accomplishment was achieved without amending our Constitution. Indeed, I am convinced that the lack of a constitutional amendment pushed both sides to get the job done right now. No one was able to say to their constituents: ``Well, we passed a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, now it's up to State legislatures.'' Mr. President, we still have a ways to go. This budget resolution is only the beginning; we still have to enact the necessary spending cuts to reach balance. More importantly, our longer-term budget prospects need much more serious work. In fact, my biggest concern is that the agreement leaves enough room for either or both sides to push tax or spending policies that worsen our longer-term budget prospects. I am particularly concerned that while the tax cut agreement may look sustainable in the budget resolution, it may become entirely unsustainable in the long-run, and only aggravate the serious budget problems we know we will face with the retirement of the baby boomers. We all must continue the bipartisan commitment reflected by this budget agreement to ensure the resulting tax and spending legislation does not undermine either the immediate goal of that agreement-- balancing the unified budget--nor our ability to take the next critical steps--enacting necessary entitlement reform, balancing the budget without relying on the Social Security trust funds, and beginning to reduce our national debt. Mr. President, while many can be congratulated for the work done to produce this budget, I want to note especially the work done by our Budget Committee Chairman, the senior Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Domenici] and our ranking member, the senior Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Lautenberg]. I joined the Budget Committee this past January, and this is my first experience as a member in working on a budget resolution. To say the least, Mr. President, it has been a remarkable first experience. We all realize that reaching this kind of settlement is not simply a matter of finding policies on which there is agreement. The character and good will of the negotiators makes an enormous difference, and both sides of the aisle were well represented in this regard. Mr. President, understandably, we often find ourselves focusing on the developing details of the agreement as the negotiations proceeded, and we all have specific matters to which we pay special attention. All of that is appropriate. But we often lose sight of the big picture, and the big picture here is that this budget resolution gives us the opportunity to actually achieve balance in the unified budget by 2002. That is an historic achievement, and a great deal of the credit for that achievement should go to our chairman and ranking member. I am proud to serve with them, and delighted to be a member of the committee they oversee. I look forward to working with them next year on a budget resolution that takes the next important steps: enacting necessary entitlement reforms, achieving true balance without using the Social Security trust funds, and reducing the national debt.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am very pleased to be joining the junior Senator from Illinois [Mr. Durbin] as an original cosponsor of legislation to designate 5.7 million acres of Federal lands in Utah as wilderness. Though this is the first time this particular measure has been introduced in this body, it is not the first time that the protection of Utah's public lands has been before the Senate. During the last Congress, I joined with the former Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Bradley, in opposing the Omnibus Parks legislation because it contained provisions, which were eventually removed, that many in my home State of Wisconsin believed not only designated as wilderness too little of the Bureau of Land Management's holding in Utah deserving of such protection, but also substantively changed the protections afforded designated lands under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Wallace Stegner wrote ``No place is a place until things that have happened there are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments.'' The lands of southern Utah are legendary, alive, and well remembered in the minds and hearts of the people of Wisconsin. In writing to me last Congress, my constituents described these lands as places of special family moments, healing silence, and incredible beauty. In March 1996, during debate on the omnibus parks bill, Ed Culhane of the Appleton Post-Crescent wrote: This is some of the most beautiful landscape in the world and each year hundreds of thousands of people hike into these canyons, into this hard, dry land of varnished cliffs and blasted mesas. Aldo Leopold once asked if a still higher standard of living was worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. If we lose the Redrock Wilderness, we will get precious little in return. Some may say, Mr. President, that this legislation is unnecessary and Utah already has the ``monument'' that Wallace Stegner wrote about, designated by President Clinton on September 18, 1997. However, it is important to note, the land of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, included among the lands to be given wilderness protection in this bill, is less than one third of the lands this bill protects. I supported the President's actions to designate the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. On September 17, 1997, amid reports of the pending designation, I authored a letter to President Clinton, cosigned by six other members of the Senate, supporting that action. That letter concluded with the following statement ``We remain interested in working with the Administration on appropriate legislation to evaluate and protect the full extent of public lands in Utah that meet the criteria of the 1964 Wilderness Act.'' I believe that the measure being introduced today accomplishes that goal. Identical in its designations to H.R. 1500 sponsored in the other body by Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York, it is the culmination of more than 10 years and four Congresses of effort in the other body beginning with the legislative work of the former Congressman from Utah, Mr. Owens. The measure protects wild lands that really are not done justice in words. Truly remarkable American resources of red rock cliff walls, desert, canyons and gorges are found on these BLM lands which encompass the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau, the Mojave Desert and portions of the Great Basin. They include mountain ranges in western Utah, stark areas like the new National Monument, and wildlife intensive areas like the Deep Creek and Stansbury Mountains, that support habitat for deer, elk, cougars, bobcats, bighorn sheep, coyotes, birds, reptiles, and other wildlife. These regions appeal to all types of American outdoor interests from hikers and sightseers to hunters. Phil Haslanger of the Capital Times, a paper in Madison, answered an important question I am often asked when people want to know why a Senator from Wisconsin would cosponsor legislation to protect lands in Utah. He wrote on September 13, 1995 simply that ``These are not scenes that you could see in Wisconsin. That's part of what makes them special.'' He continues, and adds what I think is an even more important reason to act to protect these lands than the landscape's uniqueness, ``the fight over wilderness lands in Utah is a test case of sorts. The anti-environmental factions in Congress are trying hard to remove restrictions on development in some of the Nation's most splendid areas.'' Wisconsinites are watching this test case closely. I believe, Mr. President, that Wisconsinites view the outcome of this fight to save Utah's lands as a sign of where the Nation is headed with respect to its stewardship of natural resources in Wisconsin. For example, some in my home State believe that among Federal lands that comprise the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the Nicolet and Chequamegon National Forests there are lands that are deserving of wilderness protection. I know first hand what spectacular and special places these Federal properties are, and what they mean to the people of Wisconsin. Wisconsinites want to know that, should additional lands in Wisconsin be brought forward for wilderness designation, the type of protection they expect from Federal law is still available to be extended because it had been properly extended to other places of national significance. What Haslanger's Capital Times comments make clear is that while some in Congress may express concern about creating new wilderness in Utah, wilderness, as Wisconsinites know, is not created by legislation. Legislation to protect existing wilderness insures that future generations may have an experience on public lands equal to that which is available today. The action of Congress to preserve wild lands by extending the protections of the Wilderness Act of 1964 publicly codifies that expectation and promise. Finally, and perhaps the most important reason why this legislation is receiving my support, and deserves the support of others in this body, is that all of the 5.7 million acres that will be protected under this bill are already public lands held in trust by the Federal Government. Thus, while they are physically located in Utah, their preservation is important to the citizens of Wisconsin as it is for others. I am eager to work with my colleague from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, to protect these lands. I commend him for introducing this measure.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I am very pleased to be joining the junior Senator from Illinois [Mr. Durbin] as an original cosponsor of legislation to designate 5.7 million acres of Federal lands in Utah as wilderness. Though this is the first time this particular measure has been introduced in this body, it is not the first time that the protection of Utah's public lands has been before the Senate. During the last Congress, I joined with the former Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Bradley, in opposing the Omnibus Parks legislation because it contained provisions, which were eventually removed, that many in my home State of Wisconsin believed not only designated as wilderness too little of the Bureau of Land Management's holding in Utah deserving of such protection, but also substantively changed the protections afforded designated lands under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Wallace Stegner wrote ``No place is a place until things that have happened there are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments.'' The lands of southern Utah are legendary, alive, and well remembered in the minds and hearts of the people of Wisconsin. In writing to me last Congress, my constituents described these lands as places of special family moments, healing silence, and incredible beauty. In March 1996, during debate on the omnibus parks bill, Ed Culhane of the Appleton Post-Crescent wrote: This is some of the most beautiful landscape in the world and each year hundreds of thousands of people hike into these canyons, into this hard, dry land of varnished cliffs and blasted mesas. Aldo Leopold once asked if a still higher standard of living was worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. If we lose the Redrock Wilderness, we will get precious little in return. Some may say, Mr. President, that this legislation is unnecessary and Utah already has the ``monument'' that Wallace Stegner wrote about, designated by President Clinton on September 18, 1997. However, it is important to note, the land of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, included among the lands to be given wilderness protection in this bill, is less than one third of the lands this bill protects. I supported the President's actions to designate the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. On September 17, 1997, amid reports of the pending designation, I authored a letter to President Clinton, cosigned by six other members of the Senate, supporting that action. That letter concluded with the following statement ``We remain interested in working with the Administration on appropriate legislation to evaluate and protect the full extent of public lands in Utah that meet the criteria of the 1964 Wilderness Act.'' I believe that the measure being introduced today accomplishes that goal. Identical in its designations to H.R. 1500 sponsored in the other body by Representative Maurice Hinchey of New York, it is the culmination of more than 10 years and four Congresses of effort in the other body beginning with the legislative work of the former Congressman from Utah, Mr. Owens. The measure protects wild lands that really are not done justice in words. Truly remarkable American resources of red rock cliff walls, desert, canyons and gorges are found on these BLM lands which encompass the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau, the Mojave Desert and portions of the Great Basin. They include mountain ranges in western Utah, stark areas like the new National Monument, and wildlife intensive areas like the Deep Creek and Stansbury Mountains, that support habitat for deer, elk, cougars, bobcats, bighorn sheep, coyotes, birds, reptiles, and other wildlife. These regions appeal to all types of American outdoor interests from hikers and sightseers to hunters. Phil Haslanger of the Capital Times, a paper in Madison, answered an important question I am often asked when people want to know why a Senator from Wisconsin would cosponsor legislation to protect lands in Utah. He wrote on September 13, 1995 simply that ``These are not scenes that you could see in Wisconsin. That's part of what makes them special.'' He continues, and adds what I think is an even more important reason to act to protect these lands than the landscape's uniqueness, ``the fight over wilderness lands in Utah is a test case of sorts. The anti-environmental factions in Congress are trying hard to remove restrictions on development in some of the Nation's most splendid areas.'' Wisconsinites are watching this test case closely. I believe, Mr. President, that Wisconsinites view the outcome of this fight to save Utah's lands as a sign of where the Nation is headed with respect to its stewardship of natural resources in Wisconsin. For example, some in my home State believe that among Federal lands that comprise the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and the Nicolet and Chequamegon National Forests there are lands that are deserving of wilderness protection. I know first hand what spectacular and special places these Federal properties are, and what they mean to the people of Wisconsin. Wisconsinites want to know that, should additional lands in Wisconsin be brought forward for wilderness designation, the type of protection they expect from Federal law is still available to be extended because it had been properly extended to other places of national significance. What Haslanger's Capital Times comments make clear is that while some in Congress may express concern about creating new wilderness in Utah, wilderness, as Wisconsinites know, is not created by legislation. Legislation to protect existing wilderness insures that future generations may have an experience on public lands equal to that which is available today. The action of Congress to preserve wild lands by extending the protections of the Wilderness Act of 1964 publicly codifies that expectation and promise. Finally, and perhaps the most important reason why this legislation is receiving my support, and deserves the support of others in this body, is that all of the 5.7 million acres that will be protected under this bill are already public lands held in trust by the Federal Government. Thus, while they are physically located in Utah, their preservation is important to the citizens of Wisconsin as it is for others. I am eager to work with my colleague from Illinois, Mr. Durbin, to protect these lands. I commend him for introducing this measure.

Mr. FEINGOLD

Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I will vote against H.R. 1122, the so- called partial-birth abortion bill that would outlaw a particular abortion procedure, the intact dilation and extraction, sometimes called intact D&E. I do support a ban on post-viability abortions, if it contains important and constitutionally required exceptions to protect the life and health of the woman. I am disappointed that the proponents of H.R. 1122 have steadfastly refused to accept any amendment, no matter how tightly crafted, which would include provisions to protect women's health. I have said repeatedly here on the floor of the Senate, during hearings in the Judiciary Committee, and at listening sessions held across the State of Wisconsin that I believe that a law to ban this controversial procedure could have been enacted last year with one simple addition--an exception that would allow physicians to perform the procedure on women whose health is at risk. Such an exception, in combination with the bill's existing exception to save the life of the woman, is an important and necessary provision. I am sensitive to the fears of the bill's proponents that such an exception could prove to be a major loophole, and I agree that the health exception should be narrow. But it needs to be there. Let me remind my colleagues that the Supreme Court has clearly ruled that, although States have the right to restrict post-viability abortions, exceptions must always be made to protect the life and health of the mother. Women cannot be required to trade off their well- being in order to increase the likelihood of fetal survival. Last Thursday, I voted for the bipartisan alternative amendment to H.R. 1122 introduced by Senator Daschle and others. I voted for this amendment because it took a comprehensive approach to banning abortions on viable fetuses, rather than merely banning a single procedure. In addition, Mr. President, this amendment contained the critical, constitutionally necessary exception to protect the life and health of the woman. I believe that the health exception in the Daschle amendment was sufficiently narrow to satisfy most reasonable people's concerns about creating a loophole in the law. It would have required a physician to certify that continuation of the pregnancy would threaten the woman's life or risk grievous injury to her physical health. Grievous injury was defined in the amendment as a severely debilitating disease or impairment specifically caused by the pregnancy, or an inability to provide necessary treatment for a life threatening condition. The other side claims that abortion is never necessary to protect a woman's health. But Mr. President, I have met women whose doctors believed differently. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports them, and has stated that although the intact D&E procedure is never the only option to save a woman's life or preserve her health, it sometimes may be the best or most appropriate procedure, depending on the woman's particular circumstances. Members on both sides of this debate can cite respected physicians who will support their positions. But precisely because I am not a doctor, I say again that it is essential to include a health exception in any bill we pass. The point is, Mr. President, that there is a dispute within the medical community about the necessity for and the risk associated with intact D&E. And that is where it should be resolved. It should be women and their doctors, not politicians, who decide which medical procedure is appropriate in those circumstances where an abortion is performed. If some doctors believe that it is never necessary to perform an intact D & E on a viable fetus to protect a woman's health, then they would not recommend such an intervention. But for those physicians who disagree, I do not think it is the place for this Senator or any other government entity to override that judgment. A decision regarding which medical intervention is necessary is best decided on by individual women and their physicians, in light of their individual circumstances. Another equally important aspect of the Daschle alternative amendment was its comprehensive ban on post-viability abortions. Rather than taking the approach of H.R. 1122, which would prohibit a single procedure, regardless of the stage of pregnancy, this amendment took a broader approach. It would have protected women's constitutional right to choose an abortion before the fetus is viable. But once the fetus is determined by a physician to be viable, usually around the 24th week of pregnancy, this amendment would have outlawed abortion, except in the situations I have already addressed, in which the woman's life is threatened or her health is at risk of grievous injury. This bipartisan alternative amendment struck the right balance between protecting women's constitutional right to choose abortion and the right of the State to protect future life. It would have protected a woman's physical health throughout her pregnancy, while insisting that only grievous, medically diagnoseable conditions could justify aborting a viable fetus. Both fetal viability and women's health would have been determined by the physician's best medical judgment, as they must be. It was a sensible and responsible amendment. Unfortunately, Mr. President, the Daschle amendment was rejected. This is particularly disappointing, because if the underlying bill were to become law, it would not prevent a single abortion. It would merely deny physicians the right to exercise their best medical judgment, and it would force women in critical health situations who would have opted to have an intact D&E to use different, and perhaps less safe, options. Finally, Mr. President, let me address a related topic. We all know that this debate has unfortunately been characterized by a great deal of misinformation and distortion of the facts. One particular piece of misinformation has been widely circulated by the proponents of this legislation, and I frankly don't think it is helpful to a truthful debate. It involves the deliberate misinterpretation of a conversation that I had with the junior Senator from Pennsylvania last year. During last year's floor debate over the veto override, Senator Santorum and I had a brief exchange on the Senate floor which proponents of this legislation have used to suggest that I support infanticide--that is, killing an infant after it has been fully delivered. Obviously, that is untrue. I was answering the question I thought I had been asked. I was addressing the issue of who should decide whether the life or health of a woman was at risk. Let me be clear, for the record. Once a child has been born, there is no conceivable argument that would suggest a woman's life or health would be at risk any longer. The distortion of our exchange by the National Right to Life Committee and others is the kind of tactic which undermines efforts to reach an agreement that would ban late term abortions except in the most narrow of circumstances where a woman's life or health is at stake. We are near the end of Senate debate on this issue for the time being, but I suspect that this issue will arise again when this body attempts to override another Presidential veto. As we continue to engage in this volatile and emotional debate, both on the Senate floor and in the media, I hope we will make an effort to recognize that there are strong feelings about this issue on all sides. We should respect these differences, avoid efforts to confuse or trick each other and the public, and maintain a level of debate that reflects the importance of ascertaining the truth about this issue and finding responses that are sensitive and constitutionally sound.