T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I now ask consent there be a period for the transaction of routine morning business with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of H. Con. Res. 244 and the Senate then proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, as many of my colleagues know, I had the pleasure--or displeasure--of being in Seattle during the now infamous World Trade Organization meeting last fall, shortly after Congress adjourned for the year. The images broadcast via the airwaves portrayed a negative image of Seattle and a narrow view of the debate in this country surrounding free trade. The spectacle of the ``Battle in Seattle'' that most of us saw on the evening news also did not accurately represent the full experience that law enforcement officers on the street endured. These officers suffered through appalling work conditions largely attributable to poor planning by public officials responsible for such preparation. In spite of these conditions, the incidents of confrontation and violence were kept to a surprising minimum. These fine men and women in law enforcement deserve recognition for their vigilance, their restraint, and their dedication. Officers, wearing 60-70 pounds of tear gas drenched equipment, were forced to stand the line with minimal rest, no bathroom facilities, and little food--for shifts of 16 to 17 hours. Given the fact that officers endured a continual barrage of insults and projectiles from out-of- control protestors, I am surprised that there were not more instances where frustration and exhaustion temporarily superceded discipline and training. It is a credit to the men and women of the Seattle Police Department, the King County Sheriff's Office, the Washington State Patrol, and the many officers from other localities, that their restraint kept a bad situation from becoming much, much worse. As with any confrontational event involving thousands of people, mistakes were made by both sides. It is clear, however, that the law enforcement officers involved with the WTO in Seattle overwhelmingly exhibited professionalism and conduct above and beyond the call of duty--for that they should be commended. To the officers who, against great odds, did everything they could to preserve peace and order, I offer my sincere thanks.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, in November I had the pleasure of joining a unique group of students on a field trip to Coppei Creek outside of Walla Walla, Washington. The Advanced Placement biology class from Walla Walla high school, led by their teacher Anne Swant, has been engaged in an innovative program to study wild steelhead restoration and monitor water quality. The Coppei Creek project is a collaboration between the Walla Walla conservation district, Tri-State Steelheaders, City of Waitsburg, and local landowners. This group came together after severe flooding damaged property and habitat in 1996. Their goal was to restore stream habitat for threatened steelhead while providing necessary flood control for adjacent farmlands. As part of the ``Four Schools'' project Anne Swant's class has teamed up with John Geidl, a retired educator and executive secretary of Tri- State Steelheaders, to institute a ``classrooms in the stream'' project--teaching biology and scientific research techniques through real-life applications. In addition to the work at Coppei Creek, the students helped design and construct in-stream habitat and riparian buffers for a fish-bearing stream on their own school campus. For their leadership in this revolutionary program, I was proud to award Anne Swant and John Geidl one of my ``Innovation in Education'' awards for excellence and creativity in hands-on science learning and leadership in teaching community conservation. This program, and the Coppei Creek restoration project are models of locally-driven conservation and education initiatives. This community has taken it upon itself, without unnecessary pressure from Washington DC bureaucrats, to engage in salmon habitat restoration and use it as an educational experience for future stewards of this precious resource. Clearly, a good education in today's world requires much more than just solid academic instruction--it must also include a broader understanding of the application of those skills learned in the classroom. The Four Schools Project is an excellent example of this principle in action. I propose to my colleagues here in the Senate that this successful project is further proof that local educators will be able to make the best decisions about the unique needs of their students.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, be allowed to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 3, 2000. The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss rural satellite and cable systems loan guarantee proposal and the digital divide in rural America.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 3, 2000 at 9:30 a.m., in open and closed sessions, to receive testimony on current and future worldwide threats to the national security of the United States.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 3, at 11 a.m. to receive testimony from Eric D. Eberhard, nominated by the President to be a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation; and W. Michael McCabe, nominated by the President to be Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on February 3, 2000 at 10 a.m. to consider the nominations to the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, February 3, 2000 at 2 p.m. to hold an open hearing on intelligence matters.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Oversight be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on Thursday, February 3, 2000, at 2 p.m., in SD226.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this is an appropriate time to bring my colleagues up to speed on the continuing saga that is the Microsoft anti-trust trial. Since I last came to the floor to discuss this issue, the industry, of which Microsoft is a part, has once again changed dramatically. For instance, American Online recently triggered the largest corporate merger in history with the acquisition of Time- Warner. This media giant is now poised to compete vigorously in every aspect of the Internet, from the wires that connect you, to the content you watch. To meet this challenge, Microsoft and a legion of its competitors must be allowed to compete vigorously in the ever-changing landscape of the information technology industry. My fellow Senators will soon receive a ``dear colleague'' letter endorsing an amicus brief filed on behalf of Microsoft by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT). ACT is a nonprofit association representing more than 9,000 companies in the information technology industry. ACT's membership is made up mostly of small and medium sized businesses but includes household names such as CompUSA, Excite at Home, Intel, Microsoft and Symantec. These members come from all walks of the industry, unified by the cause of protecting competition and innovation in the industry. This brief was prepared by a bi-partisan group of legal heavyweights including former White House Counsels Lloyd Cutler and C. Boyden Gray as well as former Attorneys General Griffin Bell and Nicholas Katzenbach. It eloquently reinforces many of the points that I have made on the Senate floor for over a year now. In the end, I think you will agree that this document reveals the glaring weaknesses in the DoJ's case against Microsoft. The amicus brief reinforces the point that current antitrust laws expressly allow, and even encourage, the kind of competitive activity that the government seeks to stop; the kind of competition that continues to benefit not only consumers, but the hundreds of thousands of high-tech workers and entrepreneurs in the software and hardware industries as well. It also sounds the familiar refrain that the government needs to take a highly pragmatic and cautious approach to antitrust enforcement in this dynamic industry. Unfortunately, Judge Jackson found last year that Microsoft's Windows holds a lawfully acquired monopoly of the market for ``operating systems'' for Intel-compatible personal computers. Although Microsoft may later challenge this finding, the brief assumes for purposes of argument that the finding is correct. The plaintiffs (the federal government and several states) charge that Microsoft, in adding the Internet Explorer browser to Windows and marketing the package, violated antitrust laws. The amicus brief--and the Supreme Court cases on which it relies--demonstrates that the purpose of the antitrust laws is to protect consumers and competition-- not competitors--and that Microsoft, far from violating the antitrust laws, competed vigorously to the immense benefit of consumers. Vigorous competition, which antitrust laws are designed to protect, produces innovation, better products, more efficient distribution, and lower prices. All of these results of competition are to the benefit of consumers. The antitrust laws do not require competing firms to be nice to one another, or protect firms against their more powerful rivals. It is not wrong for any company to want to take business away from its rivals. The antitrust laws encourage a firm that holds a lawfully acquired monopoly to compete hard to keep that monopoly. They also encourage such a firm to enter other fields where, by competing with better and cheaper products, it can benefit consumers. Judge Jackson found that the widespread use of the Windows operating system has made it is a platform for a vast range of computer applications that consumers now enjoy. Judge Jackson also found that when Microsoft added a superior Internet browser (Internet Explorer) and offered it to consumers at no extra charge, these actions gave consumers better access to the Internet and spurred its rival Netscape to improve the quality of its ``Navigator'' browser and to distribute it at no charge. Microsoft did not drive Netscape's Navigator out of the browser market. On the contrary, even Judge Jackson found that Netscape's ``installed base'' has more than doubled since 1995 and will continue to grow in the future. Browser competition remains vigorous. Microsoft did successfully break into the browser market and did obtain a share of that market for itself. The single most important reason, as even Judge Jackson found, is that Microsoft rival AOL itself chose and re-chose Internet Explorer over Navigator, even though AOL now owns Netscape. AOL made that choice because Microsoft offered a better product, better service, and better marketing support than did Netscape. Microsoft's agreements with PC manufacturers and Internet access providers to distribute Internet Explorer were lawful agreements designed to help Microsoft break into a browser market in which Netscape was the overwhelmingly dominant firm. It was good for competition and consumers, for Microsoft to introduce competition into that market. The plaintiff's theory is essentially that Microsoft, once it had a lawful monopoly in the operating systems market, should not have aggressively entered the browser market, because Netscape's dominance of that market might have led to more competition in operating systems. That theory is bad law. Again, the law protects consumers, not competitors. Consumers benefit when any firm, including one holding a lawful monopoly, competes aggressively to challenge another firm's incipient monopoly in a related field. This competition helped usher in the most important change occurring on earth today. The power of information has been taken from a few large centralized institutions and put directly into the hands of people in every town and village across our globe via the Internet. Not only is the number of users increasing exponentially, but the amount of information available to them is also growing at an unprecedented rate. The International Data Corporation estimated the number of web pages on the World Wide Web at 829 million at the end of 1998, and projects that the number will be 7.7 billion by 2002. The explosive growth of the Internet will eventually have a fundamental impact on every aspect of American life, and will introduce a vastly different landscape in high-technology than exists today. Users will not necessarily use stationary personal computers to access information, but instead rely on Web phones, palmtop computers and similar technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Microsoft must be allowed to compete in order to survive this transition. Although Microsoft is a large and powerful company, it faces aggressive present and future competition in every field it enters, and if it wants to maintain its present position it must compete vigorously on every front, with innovations, improved quality and lower prices. That is exactly what antitrust policy seeks to promote. For a court to enter into this vitally important and rapidly changing field and seek to dictate what products shall be made and sold by which firms would be a tragic mistake. For example, if a few years ago a court had ordered Microsoft not to add Internet Explorer to Windows, there would today be fewer hardware manufacturers, fewer software developers, fewer applications, and a far less developed Internet, and the world would be a poorer place. The best solution for both the administration and the courts is to retire from the field and to allow the most dynamic company in the history of technology to continue its growth in a competitive market, free from government interference.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Dodd and Senator Dorgan.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. For the information of all Senators, when the Senate convenes on Monday, it will be in a period of morning business until 2 p.m. Following morning business, the Senate will begin consideration of the Mariana Islands legislation. Any votes ordered on that bill will be scheduled to occur on Tuesday, February 8. Therefore, Senators may expect the first vote of next week to occur on Tuesday at a time to be determined. Also, on Tuesday the Senate is expected to begin consideration of the nuclear waste bill. It is hoped that action on that legislation can be completed by the end of the week.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until the hour of 12 noon on Monday, February 7. I further ask unanimous consent that on Monday, immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then proceed to a period of morning business with Senators speaking for up to 10 minutes each, with the following exceptions: Senator Durbin, or his designee, from 12 noon to 1 p.m.; Senator Thomas, or his designee, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that at 2 p.m. the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. 1052, the Mariana Islands bill.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent that the injunction of secrecy be removed from the following treaty transmitted to the Senate on February 3, 2000, by the President of the United States: Treaty with Romania on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (Treaty Document No. 106-20). I further ask that the treaty be considered as having been read the first time; that it be referred, with accompanying papers, to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed; and that the President's message be printed in the Record.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. I asked in the letter that the Vice President, in his exalted position in this administration, do his very best to see to it that the State Department ends this arbitrary action and promptly reimburses the region with that entire $5 million figure, to be distributed as is most just among the various agencies that incurred those costs. This is a simple request. It is a request to the Vice President of the United States to see to it that the United States keeps its obligations, obligations which to this point have been disgracefully ignored. I am certain the Vice President has sufficient authority and importance in the administration that his views on this case, if they are made known forcibly and well, will be acted upon. I hope very much he will do exactly that and help us, at least for a modest degree of compensation for what was an extremely unhappy experience in the community as a whole and among our law enforcement officials. Exhibit 1 U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, February 1, 2000. Hon. Al Gore, The White House, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Vice President: Last spring, the administration selected the City of Seattle from a list of 40 entries to be the honorary host site for the largest trade meeting ever held on U.S. soil, the World trade Organization Ministerial. While the outcome of the event was not what we might have liked, hosting the Ministerial imposed a severe financial burden on the City of Seattle and surrounding communities. Recognizing that the city and other involved jurisdictions would need assistance and support for security, members of the Washington State Delegation in the House and Senate supported language in the Fiscal Year 2000 Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary Appropriations bill to provide $5 million to be used for costs related to the WTO Ministerial in Seattle. Just as the trade event was set to convene and the first foreign dignitaries were arriving in Seattle, this language and allocation became law. Unfortunately, at the same time that foreign and U.S. Trade representatives were convening in Seattle for the initiation of a new round of trade agreements, so too did tens of thousands of protestors, including many who had every intent of disrupting the Ministerial. While I have expressed reservations about how the City of Seattle chose to deal with the onslaught of protesters, I believe that the enacted financial assistance is not only required, but overdue. To make matters worse, as Seattle continues the task of mending its wounds, the U.S. State Department has refused to release one nickel of the aforementioned allocation. Seattle, its residents and law enforcement still feel the sting of the black eye endured during the week of the WTO. Preliminary estimates suggest that local taxpayers spent more than $12 million for security expenses related to the WTO, and the Washington State Patrol suggests that at least $2.3 million was absorbed for overtime security expenses. To expect local communities to absorb such security costs for a major international event is unjustified. As you visit Seattle this week to curry favor with our voters, I will not chastise you, as I have done in the past, for not speaking out on key issues facing the Northwest. Instead, I ask you to assist our community by placing a call to your colleague, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and demand that the funds prescribed in the FY2000 CJSJ Appropriations bill be released to Seattle. Thank you in advance for your assistance. Sincerely, Slade Gorton, U.S. Senator.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, earlier this afternoon the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy, welcomed to the chair in which the Acting President now sits the Vice President of the United States in his capacity as President of the Senate. It was out of order for me to speak at that point, and I regret the fact that I was unable to do so because my message is to the Vice President of the United States. Leaving this place, he is now on his way to Seattle, my home State, in pursuance of the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. On a number of occasions during the course of the last year when the Vice President has graced us with his presence, I have asked on this floor and elsewhere that he address some of the controversial and burning issues in the Pacific Northwest, usually without getting a particularly significant response. I don't intend to do that today. I welcome the Vice President to Seattle, and I am going to ask him for his help and for a favor to the people of that city and the region. Early last year, the Clinton administration picked Seattle out of 40 city applicants to host a conference by the World Trade Organization for an extended period of time. Careful preparations for that meeting were made by the administration, by State officials, by officials in the city of Seattle and in the surrounding area, and by private organizations that desired to take part in the WTO meetings. We, as is customary when a major international conference goes to an American city, recognized the extra costs that would accrue to Seattle and the region by directing the State Department to reimburse Seattle and surrounding communities by upwards of $5 million for the extra costs of law enforcement that were inevitably to be a part of that WTO conference. Senator Murray, my colleague, and I joined in strongly supporting that proposal, and it was accepted, not only by the Senate but by the Congress, memorialized in the Commerce-State-Justice appropriations bill. As we all know now, to our regret, the preparations for that WTO meeting were inadequate to meet the deluge of demonstrators who descended on Seattle, some of them quite violent in nature. While in my view our law enforcement officers performed in exemplary fashion under extremely difficult circumstances, neither the political preparation for that meeting on the part of their superiors, the disposition of the law enforcement officers, nor their leadership was up to the task. We ended up with a very regrettable and probably disastrous experience in the city with security for the organization, added to, very significantly, for the future of our trade relations by what I consider to be the utterly inappropriate performance of the President of the United States in undercutting his own negotiators. Nevertheless, the net result was approximately a cost of $12 million to law enforcement over and above what would normally have been the circumstances. Not only does that exceed by a margin of more than 2 to 1 the $5 million that we directed be added as assistance for those efforts, but the State Department of the United States of America has flatly refused to reimburse Seattle or any of the other communities in the area by so much as $1. I may say, the State Department seems quite happy to reimburse the costs of all of the Members of both Houses of Congress who went to Seattle for that conference, but a direction from this Congress, a direction from this Senate, that the Seattle area deserved a $5 million contribution to these law enforcement problems has, to this point, been utterly ignored by the State Department. Seattle and other local officials have been spurned in all of their efforts to get that assistance by what I consider to be weak and inadequate grounds. Mr. President, I have come to the point. Yesterday I wrote a letter to the Vice President of the United States that I ask unanimous consent be printed in the Record in full at the end of my remarks.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I understand we are about to go into executive session for the consideration of the nomination of Alan Greenspan. I wish to speak on another subject, so I ask unanimous consent that the order be set aside and I be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, as the Senate prepares to debate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the coming weeks, one of the topics we will no doubt address is this issue of school safety. I want to recognize the extraordinary efforts of a group of students and teachers in eastern Washington in addressing violent crime in their community and making their school a safer place for all students. The Leadership Class at Naches Valley High School has done an excellent job at incorporating creative solutions and programs to curb gang activity and encourage fellow students to do well in school. For their efforts, I am presenting these students and their teacher, Mr. Sanford Jetton with my ``Innovation in Education'' award. Naches Valley is a rural school district at the foot of the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. For years, Naches Valley High School reflected the small community values with little conflict between students. In 1996, it discovered it was not immune from the problems that are common-place in most large urban schools--gangs, drugs, depression, crime, to name a few. When the high school had its first incident of gang violence, students in the Leadership class were both frightened and angry. While such a reaction would be expected, their response was anything but typical. Not only did the students confront the gang members, challenging them to be positive contributors to the school atmosphere, but they proactively worked with their principal, their Leadership teacher Sanford Jetton, the Mayor, and the deputies from the sheriff's department to address the problem. The students helped write a town ordinance which declared the local park to be part of the school grounds for an hour before and an hour after school, or whenever that park is being used for school activities. This allows for disruptive students to be dealt with both by law enforcement and the school's own ``zero tolerance'' gang policy. As a result of this direct intervention, most of the gang members relinquished that affiliation and eventually graduated from Naches. In addition, there have been no further incidences of gang violence at Naches Valley High School since 1996. The Leadership class did not stop with the problem of gang violence. Its members looked for innovative ways to promote drug and violence prevention through school and community service. The list of student- initiated accomplishments is quite impressive: The class established a Student Accountability Board (S.A.B.) which provides alternative consequences for students pulled over by the sheriff's office for traffic violations. The S.A.B. has resulted in a 50 percent reduction in traffic citations. Seat belt use among students has also risen from 63 percent in 1997 to 93 percent in 1999. Working with the University of Washington, the class prepared a suicide awareness program which has since spread to six other schools. The class initiated a ``Student Sharing Solutions'' program which teams up schools throughout the Yakima Valley for such events as a countrywide graffiti paint-out. The class has also taken the lead in such projects as replenishing local food banks and in raising money for a fellow NVHS student who was severely injured in a car crash and whose family has no medical insurance. These young leaders, and their teacher have been recognized in their community at problem solvers and generous servants. In 1998, the Naches Valley Leadership Class received the Greater Yakima Chamber of Commerce Service Award. As the Senate prepares to take on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, I believe we in Congress would do well to trust students and teachers, like Sanford Jetton and his Leadership class with more freedom and flexibility to create these types of innovative programs. That is why I have introduced my Straight A's education bill to give parents, teachers, principals, superintendents and school board members with the flexibility to make the best decisions about how to educate our children and provide measures to keep states accountable for the results.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. The Senator is correct. Additionally, I also understand that the day before this ``deal'' was announced, Judge Dwyer held a status conference with all the parties, including the defendant- interveners. The government attorneys told him that no agreement had been reached, and that the next mediation session was to occur on December 2. The Judge then set December 3 for the next status conference. Apparently, this Administration has as much trouble speaking with any probity to the Judicial Branch as they have recently with the Congress. It appears that the Judge's admonition to include the ``defendant-interveners'' in the discussions was ignored.

Mr. GORTON. I concur with the observations of my colleague from Idaho. The sales in question have not been made available to operate. They are still subject to the impossible survey requirements that caused the injunction to begin with. That is why I would urge the Administration in the strongest terms to return to the negotiating table with the defendant-interveners and address their concerns. Specifically, there should be an agreed-upon time-frame and a date certain for the completion of the agreed-upon survey requirements. Failure to conduct a good-faith effort to complete the settlement process in the fashion ordered by the Judge should be grounds for withholding final approval of the agreement.

Mr. GORTON. Yes, I would like to clarify that matter. There is no language whatsoever in the Interior portion that provides an authorization for the American Heritage Rivers Initiative.

Mr. GORTON. I appreciate the gentleman bringing this to the Subcommittee's attention. I certainly can understand the Senator's concern with the closure of this base and his constituents' frustration with seemingly inexplicable delays in making progress toward a re- opening. I look forward to working with the Senator and with BLM, to look into this matter and arrive at the best, earliest possible resolution. desulfurization (bds) grant