T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I yield.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I appreciate the decision of the Senator from North Carolina, Senator Helms, not to offer his amendment so we can speed up debate on this important bill. The issue that Senator Helms has brought to our attention is a serious one that deserves emphasis. I am confident through my conversations with the current Secretary of the Smithsonian, Mr. Heyman, that the Smithsonian intends properly to fulfill its obligations as steward of this public trust. Secretary Heyman agrees that no Federal appropriation will be used for projects that have not yet been authorized by Congress.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, will the Senator from North Carolina yield?

Mr. GORTON. I thank the Senator from Illinois for her comments regarding the mild gasification facility planned for southern Illinois. As I am sure the Senator knows, given the budget constraints that the committee was forced to confront, we were simply unable to include the funds needed to initiate construction of the Mildgas Process Unit. I can assure the distinguished Senator, however, that I will give appropriate consideration to this project within the budget limitations that we will continue to face in conference. federal emergency management agency

Mr. GORTON. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, the Senator from Michigan is correct. This amendment has been accepted on this side.

Mr. GORTON. Madam President, I find it simply incredible that almost the only suggestion for the reduction in funds that we get from Members who, by and large, have been voting to increase funds for all sorts of income transfer purposes is to take away funds that help the United States sell its agricultural products abroad. This program does more to benefit hard-working American farmers and food processors than almost any other program we have. It helps to deal with a terrible deficit in our trade balance, the largest this country has ever had. It is a more positive impact on what we do to produce money for our farmers, for the people who work for them, for those who process food, than practically any other program. By all means, we should not turn down the opportunity to help our economy become more and more competitive. We should reject this amendment.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my distinguished colleagues, Senator Breaux and Senator Chafee, by cosponsoring S. 478, a bill that will correct the diesel fuel problem affecting the boating community, ports, and marinas in my home State of Washington and across the nation. The problem results from the 24.4 cents per gallon tax imposed by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 on diesel fuel used in recreational boats. The bill mandated two types of fuel: clear, taxable fuel used in recreational boats and dyed, nontaxable fuel used in commercial boats. By law, the dyed nontaxable commercial diesel fuel cannot be sold to the recreational boaters. These changes have wreaked havoc on the boating communities in Washington State. Many marinas are not equipped with the two separate tanks necessary to store the two different types of fuel. Unable to afford the exorbitant expense of new fuel tanks and dispensing equipment, these marinas are faced with the difficult choice of whether to sell only dyed fuel, tax free to commercial vessels, or taxable, clear fuel, to recreational vessels. Since many marinas rely on commercial boats for a majority of their business, they choose to sell diesel fuel to commercial vessels. This leads to a severe shortage of diesel fuel available to recreational boaters. This is not only a problem for recreational boaters, but also for marinas, which are forced to turn away part of their consumer base. These regulations do not promote jobs and economic opportunities for the employees of these businesses. It is outrageous for a small business owner to have to turn away good business. Faced with a severe shortage of fuel, recreational boaters are forced to travel hundreds of miles to find fuel. This creates a safety hazard, as boaters could end up stranded on their way to find fuel or be required to carry large amounts of extra fuel on board. Last year, I introduced an amendment that would have temporarily resolved the burdensome problem facing boaters and marinas. The amendment passed overwhelmingly in the Senate, but, unfortunately, was killed in the House. Therefore, we have the same problem today as we did last summer. The only way to permanently fix this problem is to pass S. 478. S. 478 will allow marinas to purchase the dyed fuel, collect the tax from the recreational boaters and pay the tax directly to the Government. It will solve the problem of inadequate fuel facilities for recreational boaters and remedy the problems faced by marinas and ports. With the boating season soon approaching, we need to correct this problem now. That is why I cosponsored S. 478. I encourage my colleagues to keep me pass this bill and bring relief to our boating communities.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, today I speak in support of an important piece of legislation designated to eliminate an unfair practice affecting thousands of senior citizens in my home State of Washington. It is S. 44, introduced by my distinguished colleagues from Nevada, Senators Reid and Bryan, to abolish the so-called source tax. As it stands today, retirees living anywhere in the country may find that their retirement pensions are taxed by a State in which they no longer reside. A State may tax a nonresident's pension simply because the person spent all, or part of, his or her working years in that State. This unjust tax is, in many cases, automatically deducted from the retiree's pension benefit every month. Retirees are outraged because their taxes are going to pay for services of which they cannot take advantage. They are not able to partake in the senior services, medical services, transportation facilities, or public parks in States where they no longer reside. They do not vote in those States and cannot influence how their tax dollars are being spent. They are, however, forced to pay taxes to support these services so that others may benefit from them. The seniors in my State characterize this practice as taxation without representation. I agree. The source tax is not only taxation without representation, but also a further drain on the already limited and fixed incomes of our senior citizens. Seniors, dependent upon fixed incomes to pay their bills and buy their groceries, are shocked when they learn that they may not have enough to get by because of the taxation policies of other States. Many senior citizens have written to me about this burdensome practice. Seniors throughout the State of Washington have expressed their outrage and frustration at being taxed by other States. And, as I travel around the State listening to the concerns of the citizens, this issue is continually brought to my attention. We need to correct this practice now. That is why I cosponsored S. 44, the Source Tax Elimination Act. I encourage my colleagues to help me pass this bill and restore tax fairness to our retirees.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I yield 30 seconds to the Senator from Montana.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, as recently as half a dozen years ago, there was a booming, successful forest products industry in rural towns all up and down the north Pacific coast of the United States. In region 6, in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, approximately 5 billion board feet of timber was being harvested. Towns were prosperous and optimistic. Families were happy and united. Schools were full. The contribution that these people made to the economy of the United States is difficult to underestimate. It was easier and less expensive to build homes, to publish newspapers, to engage in all of the activities which during that time of maximum harvests every year in the Pacific Northwest more board feet of new timber was growing than was being harvested. Beginning with the controversy over the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest--in which incidentally, the recovery goal at the time of its listing has now long since been exceeded by the discovery of additional spotted owls--at the time of the beginning of that controversy, that harvest began to drop precipitately, to the point at which in the last few years the harvest on lands of the United States of America has been close to zero. Communities have been devastated. Families have broken up. Small businesses have failed. Homes purchased by the work of many years have become useless because they cannot be sold. And we have constantly heard from those whose conscious policies drove the litigation leading to this end that the people in these towns should seek other employment in some other place or be the subject of various kinds of relief activities. So where they provided a net income to the United States from their income taxes, they now are a net drain on the people of the United States for welfare programs which have benefited primarily planners and contractors and advisors and not the people who lost their jobs. Mr. President, these people, these communities, their contributions to America have been largely ignored by the mainstream media of this country. Their professions have been denigrated. They who live in this country and have a greater investment in seeing to it that it remains booming and prosperous have been accused of utter indifference and attacks on the environment. Mr. President, that only has not been terribly unjust but it has been destructive of balance and destructive of the economy of our country. Now, into this controversy some 3 years ago came the then candidate for President of the United States, Bill Clinton, promising in a well- attended meeting in Portland, OR, balance and relief, promising to listen to the people of the Pacific Northwest, to protect the environment but at the same time to restore a significant number of the lost jobs and some degree of hope and prosperity to those communities. The first part of later President Clinton's promise was kept in 1993 when as President he returned to Portland, OR, and held a timber summit. Long after the completion of that summit came what is now known as option 9, an option which the President stated met all of the environmental laws in the United States which he was unwilling to change in any respect but also promised something more than 1 billion board feet of harvest of timber to the people of the Northwest--1 billion as against 5, or 20 percent of the historic level. I did not then and I do not now believe that that constitutes balance or that it was at all necessary to protect the environment. But it was a promise, Mr. President, of some form of relief. Since then, the President has had that option validated by a U.S. district court judge who has taken charge of this area in Seattle. But do our people have 1.1 billion board feat of harvest? No, Mr. President, they do not. In spite of the time at which that promise was made, they are nowhere close to that because the Forest Service in its personnel cuts has cut mostly the people who work in the woods preparing these sales and because the Clinton administration knows that almost no single action taken pursuant to this option will escape an appeal within the Forest Service and a lawsuit being stretched out forever and ever. That is one element, Mr. President. The second is that last summer, regrettably, was a time of major forest fires in almost every corner of the United States--loss of life in Colorado, huge fires in Idaho and Utah, large fires in my own State of Washington. Those fires have left billions of board feet of timber that is now dead, absolutely dead, but for a relatively short period of time harvestable. If it is not harvested, Mr. President, it will become worthless very quickly by rotting away and at the same time will be tinder for future forest fires. And yet the opponents to harvest say that's nature's way. Forest fires start; let them burn. Very few of them live in communities near where these fires have taken place, whose summers have been ruined by them, may I say, incidentally. And so in this bill, as in the bill produced by the House, we attempt to enable the President of the United States to keep his own promises; nothing more than that, Mr. President. It is true that the provisions in the House bill set a mandated harvest level roughly double what the administration deems to be appropriate. The proposal attacked by my colleague from the State of Washington, however, has no such requirement in it. It simply says that, after all of these years, all of these promises, all of this devastation, that we will liberate the administration to do what it wants to do. And yet, this is attacked as if, somehow or another, this administration had no concern for the environment whatsoever; that Secretary Babbitt was simply out to cut down the forests of the Bureau of Land Management; that President Clinton's Forest Service wanted to do nothing else but that, and to ignore environmental laws from one end of this country to another. It is astounding, Mr. President, that the administration itself does not wish help in keeping its own commitments. Now, both the amendment which is a part of this bill and the substitute amendment by the junior Senator from Washington cover three distinct, separate but related subjects. One on salvage timber is nationwide in scope. The administration proposes in this fiscal year to sell something over 1.5 billion board feet of salvaged timber, dead or dying timber. In region 6, which is the Pacific Northwest, the figure is about one-fifth of that total. Four-fifths of it are from other regions of the country and they include every Forest Service region in the United States. My proposal, the proposal in the bill, does not require the administration to double that offering. In fact, it has no number in it at all. But it says that the administration, having carefully considered every environmental law, is enabled to do what it tells us that it wants to do. Does this suspend the environmental laws? No, Mr. President. This administration has certainly tried its best to abide by all of them and all of them remain on the books, those I agree with and those I disagree with. And I cannot imagine that Members of this body will accuse the administration of wanting to ignore those statutes. It simply says that the administration's own decisions will not further be attacked in court by the often inconsistent provisions of six or seven or eight different statutes passed at different times with different goals. The amendment that is sought to be substituted for that which is in the bill does not reduce litigation in the slightest, Mr. President. It calls for certain expedited procedures, but it still allows every timber sale to be appealed within the Forest Service or the BLM, and every one to go to court. And they all will go to court, Mr. President, because those who will attack them, those who want nothing to be done, will recognize that all they have to do is to delay it for another season and there will not be anything to sell, because it will be worthless. So that portion of the substitute amendment is simply an invitation to have no salvage at all. The second and third elements in both amendments have to do with option 9 and with so-called section 318 sales. Section 318 was a part of the Appropriations Act in 1990, designed to provide some interim help for the forest in the two Northwest States. But many of the sales directed by this Congress pursuant to that law have been held up by subsequent environmental actions. The proposal that the committee has made simply says that those sales would go ahead unless they involved places in which endangered species are actually found, in which case, substitute lands will take their place. Our option 9 provision, I repeat, Mr. President, simply says that the President can keep the promises he made some time ago, almost 2 years ago, under option 9 and not be subject to constant harassing lawsuits. That is all that it says. It does not require him to get to the 1.1 billion board feet of harvest that he promised, and he will not. Now, the substitute amendment, in each case, for all practical purposes, makes dealing with this issue at the level of Congress pointless. All of the lawsuits will still be able to be brought, but perhaps we will actually find ourselves in a damaging situation. The Presiding Officer is from the State of New Hampshire. I presume that some small portion of this salvage timber is in his State. But if this substitute amendment passes, all of the personnel of the Forest Service from the rest of the United States will have to go to Washington and Oregon in order to meet the requirements of the substitute amendment, at the cost of every other region in the United States. Now I would like to have that kind of service in my State, but I do not believe it to be fair. I do not think we can say that we are the only ones who under any circumstances should get anything out of one of these amendments. The definition of what salvage timber is in the bill is the Forest Service's own definition. The definition in the substitute amendment is a different definition, one highly susceptible to further litigation. The exceptions provided by the amendment of the Senator from Montana keeps this kind of salvage logging out of wilderness areas and certain other well-defined areas. The proposal by the junior Senator from Washington keeps them out of any area that is under consideration for inclusion in the national wilderness preservation system. Mr. President, under that proposal, one bill by one Member of the House of Representatives introduced to put the entire National Forest System included in a wilderness preservation system would stop any harvest anywhere. It would be under consideration by Congress. What it does, in effect, is to give any of the 535 Members of Congress a veto power over the entire proposal. Mr. President, the issue in this case is clear. Do we care at all about people, not just in the Pacific Northwest but all across the United States, who live in timber communities? Do we care about our supply of lumber and of paper products? Or do we only care about the well-being of certain environmental organizations and their lawyers? That is what we are debating with respect to this amendment. Do we want the President of the United States to be able to keep his commitments, his promises, however inadequate they are? Or do we have so little trust in him that we believe that he will ignore every environmental law and decide suddenly to cut down our national forests? Mr. President, that is not going to happen. The lawsuits will, under this proposed substitute amendment, provide relief for people who need relief. Income for the Treasury of the United States will only come from rejecting the substitute amendment and accepting the bill in its present form.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, before I do so, I ask unanimous consent that privilege of the floor be granted to Dave Robertson and Art Gaffrey, congressional fellows attached to Senator Hatfield's staff.

Mr. GORTON. I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Alaska. Privilege of the Floor

Mr. GORTON. Does the Senator from Alaska wish to speak in support of the amendment?

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this amendment conforms the section of the proposal in the bill to what the House has passed. It clearly exempts wilderness areas and the like from the effect of the legislative language in the bill and I believe that, while the opponents to the whole section do not like it, they do like this addition.

Mr. GORTON. I move to table the Murray amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GORTON. Yes.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I will not object if I can add 2 more minutes to the time of Mr. Craig.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I want to answer the question but I do not wish to use my time.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Idaho.

Mr. GORTON. No.

Mr. GORTON. Yes.

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

Mr. GORTON. I can answer the specific question. The version has been corrected. The sentence is complete in the bill that is before us, and it simply says that someone who has been brought out of the Forest Service and paid, say $25,000, can be hired back temporarily for this purpose without losing the $25,000.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to set the record straight on this. It is not my intention to include a rescission from the endangered species listing program in two separate rescission bills. When it becomes clear that the Hutchison amendment will be accepted by the DOD conference committee, I plan to offer an amendment to eliminate the rescission from the listing account that is included in this bill.