T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Will the Senator yield? Does he mean that he would authorize them in this bill or would condition the appropriations----

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I thank my distinguished colleague from West Virginia for those comments and for that support. Nevertheless, he and I both realize from our past history that this is a bill which attracts a great deal of interest, a certain degree of controversy and a significant number of amendments. I am personally gratified by the fact that we have Members already willing to propose those amendments. I just have a couple of other announcements and I hope a motion. Normally, we would now adopt committee amendments. I had hoped to adopt the committee amendments en bloc and have the bill in condition to be further amended. But first there were three objections to particular committee amendments which Members wished to amend themselves. And then the senior Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm], desired to read all of the committee amendments to determine which he wished to amend first. So I am not going to move to adopt any committee amendments now. We have worked as diligently as we can with Members who have relatively noncontroversial amendments and two that are very large but nonetheless are agreed to. Amendments Nos. 2283 through 2291

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I lay before the Senate this afternoon the fiscal year 1996 Department of the Interior and related agencies appropriations bill. This bill, as reported by the Appropriations Committee, totals $12,122,927,000 in discretionary budget authority, $73,000 below the subcommittee's 602(b) allocation. The outlay scoring totals $13,167,502,000, $6,498,000 below allocation. The bill is $1,777,000,000 less than the President's budget request for budget authority and $991 million below the President's budget request for outlays. Mr. President, the bill before the Senate represents intensely difficult choices and real cuts in spending of $1.5 billion below the fiscal year 1995 level or a reduction of 11 percent. Mr. President, I want to repeat that last statement. There is $1.5 billion less in this bill than there was in the bill passed by the Congress, signed by the President, covering the current 1995 fiscal year. That is 11 percent less money from that 1995 base. As a consequence, in crafting this bill, we have had to engage in the process of distributing poverty or distributing reductions. For all practical purposes, there are no programs of any significant size that are increased in this bill and very, very few which we have been able to keep even. Members will be frustrated--and I think perhaps rightly frustrated-- by the fact that some of their important priorities have suffered reductions and can only effectively deal with those reductions when they compare them with the overall reductions in the bill as a whole. Now, agencies covered by this bill primarily in the Department of the Interior do not share equally in the 11-percent reduction. For instance, the land management agencies are reduced by 4 percent, cultural activities by 15 percent, Indian programs by 8 percent, and Department of Energy programs by 10 percent. Other Members have raised concerns about the sensitivity to the budget resolution recommendations. This proposal reflects the meshing of the budget resolution, the bill priorities of the subcommittee which wrote this bill, and of members of the full Appropriations Committee together with concerns of individual Members and the administration's own priorities. In fact, as another aside, Mr. President, I can say that the allocations out of which this bill were built are slightly higher than those that were considered and passed by this body in the budget resolution. If we had followed the budget resolution to the exclusion of all other considerations, the total amount spent would have been even lower. For instance, members of the administration in the broadest possible sense have placed a high priority on the preservation and enhancement of the National Park Service. As a consequence, the Park Service was reduced by only 6 percent overall, with no reduction for Park Service operations. In the budget resolution, a moratorium on land acquisition was assumed. Member interest, however, necessitated funding to some land acquisitions even though they are at drastically reduced levels. Also, an item, which seems to have been lost when considering the budget committee recommendations, is the $379 million reduction for unidentified Interior bill overhead. I remind Members that overhead costs exist in all agencies. We faced the question of how that should be dealt with. If applied to some of the smaller agencies, such a reduction would have had a devastating and unacceptable effect. As has been the practice in past years, the bill before us today was formulated in a bipartisan manner. I wish to thank Senator Byrd and his staff for their assistance and cooperation in drafting the Interior bill Again, Mr. President, off of my prepared text here, I should like to express my deep admiration for Senator Byrd, the ranking member of this subcommittee. I am brand new to this responsibility. He has held more offices in this Senate, including majority leader and President pro tempore, than has any other individual in its history. He was, last year, in addition to being chairman of the overall Appropriations Committee, chairman of the Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies. It, obviously, has to be very difficult to give up that position and that authority to someone who is new to these responsibilities entirely, but Senator Byrd has been not only gracious and cooperative, but has provided me with a wonderful education in the priorities and responsibilities that fall to me as chairman of the subcommittee and as manager of this bill. I want to thank him for that graciousness, and for that education. Now, Mr. President, I should like to report that the subcommittee received more than 1,400 requests for amendments to the bill, or for projects within the bill. Even that represents a major step forward from what Senator Byrd faced last year, which, if my memory serves me correctly, was more than 3,000 such requests. Perhaps that reduction does reflect the fact that most Members understand that we have this major cut. But they have made it difficult to honor more than a relatively few of them. Many of those 1,400 requests, which total up to $2.1 billion, presumed the enactment of amounts contained in the President's budget and then proposed to add something beyond that number. With the budget constraints that we faced, our starting point had to be the fiscal year 1995 budget, with extensive review and attention to the President's budget proposals, but with the necessity to reduce significantly below that 1995 level. There are, obviously, many programs which individual Senators would like to see funded at higher levels. In many cases I agree. I do have to emphasize, and remind these Senators, however, of the funding constraints that the subcommittee faced and the difficult choices that had to be made. Any amendments to increase any program area must be offset by reductions elsewhere to remain within our allocations in the Appropriations Committee and, of course, within the budget resolution overall. Now, let me turn [[Page S 11862]] briefly to the recommendations that are before you today. These are only highlights. Programs for Native Americans and Alaska Natives are funded at $3,532,042,000 within the bill, almost 30 percent of its entire amount. Within the funding constraints faced by the committee, efforts were made to protect basic health care services provided through the Indian Health Service, and the education, trust, and natural resources programs within the Interior Department. Funding has been provided for the Office of Special Trustee for American Indians, by transferring funding for natural resources management, trust services, resource management construction, and miscellaneous payments for Indian land and water settlements from BIA to the office. The activities that remain within the BIA are primarily services that are typically provided through local governments. Concerns have been raised by the chairman and ranking member of the Indian Affairs Committee concerning potential impacts of the committee's proposal on the confirmation of the special trustee. As a result, I plan to offer an amendment that will transfer the most of the activities proposed for the Office of Special Trustee for American Indians back to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Only the financial trust management functions and the immediate office of the special trustee will remain. I hope that the merits of the committee's proposal will be considered as the Indian Affairs Committee considers legislation reorganizing the BIA. In any event, this is properly its responsibility. land management On the next subject, the subcommittee has attempted to protect the operational base of the land management agencies as much as possible. I have already spoken to the fact there are no such reductions for the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service has a 3-percent reduction, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service each 5- percent reduction. To assist with the growing recreation demands on the agencies in this bill, a pilot recreation fee proposal is included in the bill after consultation with the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. The construction accounts for the land management agencies have decreased $88 million in total--20 percent. The majority of the construction projects involve the completion of ongoing projects and the restoration or rehabilitation of existing facilities. No new starts for visitor centers are provided. Overall funding for land acquisition for the land management agencies totals $127 million which is about halfway between last year's level and the outright moratorium included in the budget resolution. The committee has identified specific projects, while the House bill did not. Priority is given to completing ongoing acquisitions and avoiding new starts that will increase outyear demands. natural resources science agency (formerly NBS) The committee has recommended retaining the Department of the Interior's biological research as a separate entity. Direction is provided to refocus the agency's work on issues most critical to the land managers, but language is included to protect private property owners. mining agencies The committee has not included a moratorium on accepting and processing applications for mining patents, and that will be subject to, perhaps, an amendment that will be proposed very, very soon. The mining and minerals related agencies are collectively funded at 8 percent below the fiscal year 1995 level. The committee mark funds the Bureau of Mines at the request level of $132.5 million, a decrease of $20 million from fiscal year 1995. Field facilities proposed for closure in the budget will be maintained at lower staffing levels. The mark also includes OCS moratoria language covering the same areas covered by last year's bill. department of energy The Energy Conservation Program is funded at $577 million. The low- income Weatherization Program is funded at $137 million, or about $26.5 million above the House-passed level. The State energy block grants are funded at $31.5 million, $5 million above the House level. Bill language has been included to prohibit DOE from proposing or issuing any new or amended standards for fluorescent lamps ballasts. Fossil energy research and development is a decrease of 11 percent below the fiscal year 1995 level. Similar reductions are expected over the next several fiscal years. cultural agencies Within the constraints of our bill, we have made a concerted effort to address the critical repair and renovation needs of the cultural organizations, such as the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Kennedy Center, for which we have the primary responsibility in order to protect collections and structures of importance to the American people. Reductions to operating accounts, while unavoidable, have been kept relatively small in recognition of the wide array of public services which in part define the mission of these agencies. As a result, more significant reductions have been necessarily taken to the budgets of the Endowments, whose mandates are fulfilled in varying degrees based on the availability of funds, but whose beneficiaries, of course, have many other sources of support. We make no assumptions with respect to the continuation or termination of the Endowments, believing that to be the function of the authorizing committee. In short, we have done the best we can with severely limited resources, concentrating our efforts on those agencies that rely on the Congress for all, or about all, of their support.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I then state that I doubt that the opponents will take an hour, but for the purpose of the amendment, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 hours equally divided.

Mr. GORTON. I do not believe we are going to go over to the morning. An hour and a half equally divided is appropriate. I would recommend it, and I gather the majority leader would agree that after we have disposed of this amendment, we may debate the next amendment, but we would not vote on that until the morning.

Mr. GORTON. The disadvantage would be that no one would be here to hear the debate.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the majority leader is willing to accede to the evident desire of most of the Members, and I would state that under these circumstances, I guess we will ask for 1\1/2\ hours equally divided this evening on the amendment, and 30 minutes equally divided tomorrow morning before 9:30 and a vote to occur at 9:30 in the morning.

Mr. GORTON. Let me, Mr. President, make my announcement in the form of a unanimous-consent agreement and add to that that no other amendments be in order.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President?

Mr. GORTON. Yes.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I find much not only to commend but to agree with in the eloquent statements of my three colleagues from New Mexico, Arizona, and Hawaii. I most particularly want to agree with the opening statements of the Senator from New Mexico with respect to the fact that this bill, as is the case with every other bill, must set priorities, and that it would be entirely inappropriate simply to take every program funded in 1995 and reduce it by an identical percentage. This is particularly difficult in connection with the appropriations for the Department of the Interior, because more, perhaps, than most others, we, the Congress, are the sole source of moneys--or almost the sole source of moneys for many of the programs which are included within the Department. Because this Department, together with the Forest Service, owns and must manage for all practical purposes, all of the real property of the United States. We are not dealing with a responsibility that we can lightly brush off or abandon. However, I part company with my friend from New Mexico and my other opponents on this side when they paint the type of picture that they presented about reductions in the appropriations for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The appropriations for that Bureau amount, Mr. President, to only one-third of all of the moneys devoted to Indian programs in this country. It is almost as if during the debate earlier today on welfare one of these Senators had said, ``You are reducing aid to those most needy in our society by cutting AFDC by a given percent,'' and ignoring Medicaid, other forms of health care, food stamps, and all of the other panoply of social programs. It is almost like saying if we cut the appropriations for the U.S. Army by one-third we would be reducing the defense budget by one-third. That simply, Mr. President, is not the picture. The Senator from New Mexico has pointed out that we did not only not reduce or cut the Indian Health Service, in fact, it is, I believe, the only program of significant size in this entire budget bill that has an increase as modest as it is, and that the education programs which fall within the jurisdiction of this committee are kept almost dead even. When we deal with the Indian programs that are within the jurisdiction [[Page S 11884]] of this committee, the reduction is 8 percent from what was appropriated after the rescissions bill for Indian programs, a smaller reduction, Mr. President, than the overall loss in the bill, which is 11 percent. With few exceptions, every other program in this bill already has a greater reduction than the Indian programs covered by this bill. Mr. President, even that does not approach the amount of money appropriated for Indian or for Native American affairs, because this bill itself accounts for only two-thirds of those moneys. If we look at the President's budget, because these other appropriations bills have not yet passed, the President's budget includes $356 million in the Department of Agriculture, $20 million in the Army Corps of Engineers, $5 million in the Department of Commerce, $470 million in the Department of Education, $214 million in the Department of Health and Human Services, $485 million in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $4 million in the Department of Justice, $200 million in the Department of Transportation, and $85 million in the Environmental Protection Agency, for a total of $1.842 billion. Now, if you were to add that figure, even discounted to the total in the Department of Interior, we would end up with an overall reduction for Indian programs of approximately 5 percent. Mr. President, there are going to be few, if any, other proposals on the domestic side of this budget this year which are not hit harder than this one hits. Mr. President, we can deal with this question as a matter of internal priorities or I suppose we can deal with this question from a deeper philosophical level of the impact of all of these programs. The Senator from Arizona spoke of the goals of Indian policy as being self-determination and self-governance. Now, nothing in this bill undercuts the right of self-determination or of self-governance. The third phrase that the Senator from Arizona missed was independence--an ending of a dependency more than a century long on programs of this nature.

Mr. GORTON. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. GORTON. Yes.

Mr. GORTON. My answer to that question is a very simple answer. The Senator from New Mexico as the chairman of the Budget Committee does not feel that by reducing the President's budget for all of the activities of the Federal Government by many billions of dollars, he reduces the ability of the American people to self-government or self- determination. The ability of these tribes to govern themselves is not affected by the amount of money they are given by us. Continuing, the third self which the Senator from Arizona omitted and the Senator from New Mexico omitted, is self-sufficiency. Other local governments in the United States are primarily responsible for financing the activities in which they engage. As the Senator from New Mexico so eloquently said, Indian tribes do not levy taxes on their Members. This is not a function of poverty. They do not levy taxes on those who are doing well. These programs, the other programs which I have outlined, provide housing--not provided to most other Americans --provide health care without any contribution-- not provided to most other Americans. This entire panoply of activities. I know because I have heard these debates before, and a major goal of these policies is to create a degree of self-sufficiency. Yet, earlier in the debate over this bill when we asked that there be some kind of means testing for the distribution of money from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to tribes that would reflect the fact that some have incomes from natural resources and some have income from gambling, that proposition was anathema to those on the Committee on Indian Affairs. Because that was a substantive decision, we abandoned it. Mr. President, if there is one thing on which we all agree, it can certainly be the proposition that the policies so eloquently defended here by my three colleagues have clearly not even begun us on the road to self-sufficiency. It is strange how many different hats we can wear and not relate those subjects to one another. Until 4 o'clock this afternoon we were debating welfare reform. While there are profound differences among Members on both sides of the aisle, I think within the membership on each side of the aisle, one of the areas on which I heard no differences between the two parties even was the proposition that welfare should be temporary; that for many or most people there should not be more than 5 years, with certain exceptions during which individuals were entitled to welfare programs. And yet these programs, these programs are all forever. They are all forever. The psychology that people should be encouraged to engage in individual self-determination and self-sufficiency is absolutely absent. While it really is not an appropriate part of this debate, which is only on an appropriations bill and not on substance, it would seem to me that, as we are required to examine what a national welfare system has done to the people who are its supposed beneficiaries, it is long past time that we should examine whether or not a system of permanent dependency on the Federal Government--what kind of effect it has had on its so-called beneficiaries and whether or not many of these pathologies are not contributed to by the very programs that are being defended here. But, as I say, that is not necessarily appropriate for this debate. What is appropriate for this debate are really two factors. One, Indian programs taken as a whole have not only not been singled out for discriminatory treatment, they have been treated considerably more generously than other programs within this appropriations bill. And when we add to them appropriations which will inevitably come through other appropriations bills not dealt with so far, they will end up overall being fairly close to even. So, to concentrate on one line in this proposal, for one significant but not overwhelming part of the way in which this Government subsidizes Indian individuals and Indian tribes, is to be disingenuous if we are to look at the degree of support which is being provided to this group of citizens in the United States. It is, in comparison with the budget which has been provided for us by the Senator from New Mexico, extremely generous. Now, where does the money come from? This is a big amendment in this bill. This is $200 million to be placed back in the Bureau of Indian Affairs so that, overall, Indian activities within this bill are almost held even while everything else goes down very, very significantly. Mr. President, if we ended up with a bill that went to the President and was signed by the President with these reductions in it, what would happen to the responsibilities we have for the property that is held, effectively, in trust for all of the people of the United States, in our National Park System and our wildlife refuges, by our Bureau of Land Management? Mr. President, I do not have to guess as to that. These organizations have told us what will take place. I can simply read with respect to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Our bill includes $41 million less for the Fish and Wildlife Service than the President's requested level. This $30 million reduction, according to the Service itself, would shut down or dramatically scale back major operating programs that benefit all Americans. With a cut of this magnitude, Fish and Wildlife would have to close as many as 50 heavily visited national wildlife refuges: two in the State of Alaska, Kenai and Tetlin; one in Arizona, White River in Felsenthal, AR; Sacramento and San Francisco Bay, California; four in the State of Florida; Okefenokee in Georgia; Crab Orchard [[Page S 11885]] in Illinois; Desoto on Walnut Creek in Iowa; Quivera and Kirwin in Kansas; Sabine and Cameron Prairie and Tensas, in Louisiana; Minnesota Valley in Minnesota; two in Mississippi; two in Missouri; two in Montana, two in Nevada; three in New Jersey; three in New Mexico, three in North Carolina; one in Oklahoma; three in Oregon; three in South Carolina; Hatchee in Tennessee; Mr. President, five in Texas; one in Utah, one in Virginia; four in Washington; one in Wyoming; and waterfowl production areas in five other upper Midwest States. Recreation programs at other refuges, including hunting, fishing and outdoor education, would be reduced or eliminated to preserve funds for habitat protection or improvement. Closure of 20 hatcheries would impact the Fish and Wildlife ability to restore populations of sport and commercial fisheries in both the Atlantic and Pacific Northwest. And so on. The total economic benefits generated from shipments of wildlife imported and exported from the United States are $800 million a year. The Bureau of Land Management has already been reduced by $50 million from the President's proposal. This, according to BLM, would force it to shut down services to a wide array of public land users, including mineral extraction--on which we had a long debate and votes earlier this evening--livestock, timber, recreational users, hunters and fishermen. Mr. President, the list of closures of enterprises of the Geological Survey fall into the same category. There are more than a dozen such closures which would result. And in every case, these are responsibilities which are undertaken by the Federal Government on behalf of, not one group of Americans, but all Americans. And in the case of the two land management agencies, they are, in fact, areas in which we own and must manage the lands of the United States. And, very bluntly, they would be devastated by this amendment. In fact, I am certain, if this amendment were agreed to, the Senator from West Virginia and I would not be able, in a conference committee-- would not wish, in a conference committee--to keep these reductions. What we would have to do would be to spread them out over all of the other responsibilities through the National Park Service and the National Forest Service. Bluntly, it would include almost all of the construction and land acquisition projects which Members have asked and have received from the Senator from West Virginia and myself, most of which are not included in the House bill. Mr. President, we do have a very real responsibility. We have a responsibility for all of the agencies of the Department of the Interior, for the Forest Service, part responsibility for the Department of Energy, and for the cultural institutions of the United States. It has been neither an easy nor a pleasant task to determine where and how we can reduce those appropriations by $1.5 billion. I started my remarks this afternoon with the point that we have $1.5 billion less to spend in the next year than we do in this year. About 20 percent of that money, $300 million or so of that $1.5 billion, has been taken from Indian programs within this field of responsibility. That is a smaller share of what they are receiving this year than it is for the entire balance of this appropriations bill. This is not only not a discriminatory reduction, it is a less-than-average reduction. It is a less than average reduction in an area in which we have protected the most important functions of health care and of education, and not impacted the rights of Indian tribes to make decisions for themselves but in effect has said what is absolutely inevitable. Again I find it curious in the debate with my friend--perhaps my closest friend in the U.S. Senate, the Senator from New Mexico, who chairs the Budget Committee, on which the Presiding Officer and I serve--who has told us, and caused us to pass a budget resolution which will call for reducing expenditures in all of these areas, not just for one year but for 7, which will inevitably result in reductions like this, and many feel that somehow or another we can protect this field, and only this field, from such reduction and not ask for even a quite proportional contribution from Indian groups and a beginning of a movement on their part from the dependency to independence, to self-support for at least the governmental functions which they carry out themselves. This is a fair proposal, Mr. President, in its present form. It saves the most important Indian programs. It reflects the fact that Indian programs and other appropriations bills are likely to save even perhaps the increase. It reduces other elements in this bill by more than it does in Indian programs themselves. But it protects those functions from any cuts at all over which we have full 100 percent responsibility, such as the operations of the National Park Service and the cultural institutions of this city which are a part of the responsibility of this Congress. And those are the only areas other than Indian health which are not reduced in this bill. Mr. President, to adopt this amendment is to breach a trust. It is to breach the trust which we have imposed on the Government of the United States properly to manage its millions of acres of public domain for all of the people to provide recreational activities, to provide scientific research, to provide for the use of our natural resources. And these reductions in this bill will gut our natural science through the biological service; through the geological service; will gut our ability to manage our wildlife refuges and our land management lands, and will severely impact on the ability of the American people to enjoy those lands and to use them for recreational purposes. Mr. President, the amendment should be rejected.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the fact remains that Indian programs are reduced less by this budget than almost every other program within this appropriations bill. That is a fact. The fact is that one-third of all Indian programs are not even included in this bill and do include child care, violence prevention, and the like, and remained in bills yet undecided on this floor. The Senator from New Mexico asked but did not answer the question, are the programs which are reduced in this appropriations bill so important that restoration should come from other Indian programs? This Senator, at least, would defer to the authorizing committee, to those who represent large groups of Indians, in a reallocation of priorities within Indian programs. What this Senator feels to be totally unfair, however, is to devastate the other land management activities of the Government of the United States, land management activities which are dedicated to the benefit of all Americans, including of course, Indians, in the preservation of wildlife, the provision of recreation, the restoration of our fisheries and of our forests. These are programs that we cannot possibly abandon to anyone else. They are the sole function of the Government of the United States. Indians, who are self-governing, and at least partly self-sufficient, as inadequate as they may be, do have other sources. We discussed very briefly gaming activities which will be discussed more and more which have taken place only in the last handful of years. And yet no contributions, zero contributions is asked of the beneficiaries of those activities toward these vitally important questions. This is an appropriations bill dealing with extremely difficult questions and the requirement of overall cuts of 11 percent, which has reduced Indian programs by markedly less than that amount and has reduced other programs already by considerably more than that amount. It is neither fair, Mr. President, nor good policy, nor appropriate stewardship, nor a discharge of our trust for the lands we all own as citizens in common to make these reductions, none of which affects any of the myriad of other Indian programs, simply in order to preserve the full dependency of these Indian governmental activities on funding not of their members but of the Federal Government itself.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I have five agreed-upon amendments. I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and that these five amendments be considered en bloc. [[Page S 11888]]

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the first amendment, No. 2297, is presented on behalf of Senator Jeffords from Vermont. It has to do with the National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program, the use of cooperative agreements. The next three amendments are offered on behalf of the other Senator from the State of Washington [Mrs. Murray], and myself: One, No. 2298, modifying Lummi Indian language; the second, No. 2299, modifying Columbia Basin Ecosystem Project language; the third, No. 2300, modifying AmeriCorps language modification; and the fifth amendment, No, 2301, is from the Senator from Arizona [Mr. McCain], on land acquisition priority list requirement. None of these amendments changes the total amounts of appropriations within the bill.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which the amendments were agreed to.

T. Gorton

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