T. Gorton

Mr. GORTON

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask unanimous consent that it be considered to be in order.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this amendment is offered on behalf of myself, Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Bryan, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Reed of Rhode Island, Mr. Moynihan, and Mr. Chafee. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Boxer be added as a cosponsor of the amendment.

Mr. GORTON. I ask unanimous consent further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, rather than sitting here doing nothing, will the Senator from Michigan allow the Senator from Nevada to speak and it be charged against the time both are not using equally?

Mr. GORTON. I was about to say, for the benefit of my friend from Nevada, isn't it fortunate that the Congress of the United States, in the first decade of the 19th century, didn't prohibit the development of a steam engine because it might explode? That is basically what the arguments against the amendment the Senator from Nevada and I have proposed amount to. My gosh, something bad might happen if you did something. But, of course, the argument against the steam engine in 1810, or 1812, or 1814 would have been stronger because they knew nothing about it. We have gone through this process before, and it was a complete success. But we are now told, not only should we not go through the experiment again, we should not even study it; we should not even try to come up with facts that would justify it or--and I think it is very unlikely--perhaps not justify making any change in the present system. Now, I think both the Senator from Nevada and I believe such a study would come up with more significant CAFE standards. But I don't think the Senator from Nevada, even more than I, has any idea what they would be, how far they would go, what we would find to be totally successful or not. We just want to find out whether or not we can't do something that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, help clean up our air, and save money for the American purchaser of automobiles, small trucks and, of course, the fuel required to run them. That is all.

Mr. GORTON. I thank my colleague from Washington state. She has been out front on this issue, and I commend her for her persistence. I look forward to working with Senator Murray during the reauthorization of the federal Office of Pipeline Safety, a piece of legislation in which I will fully engage when it comes before the Senate Commerce Committee next year. While the interstate transportation of hazardous materials in above and underground pipelines has proven to be the safest and most cost-effective means to transport these materials, the Bellingham tragedy has once again alerted us to its tragic potential. During the OPS reauthorization process I intend to ensure that the federal law and the federal agency are performing their jobs of ensuring that tragedies like the one in Billingham are not repeated. I will work closely with Chairman McCain, the majority leader, and my Democratic colleagues to make this a top priority next year.

Mr. GORTON. My dear friend from Nevada is entirely correct, as, of course, he knows, having been a cosponsor of this amendment and a companion with the Senator from Washington in this cause for many years in the past.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this is an amendment that has been widely discussed relating to CAFE standards; that is to say, the fuel efficiency standards of automobiles and small trucks sold in the United States. Now, I want to quote an argument against this proposal made in a committee hearing on CAFE standards. In effect, this bill would outlaw a number of engine lines and car models, including most full-size sedans and station wagons. It would restrict the industry from producing subcompact-size cars or even smaller ones. Mr. President, you may well ask me when that hearing took place because you were unaware that hearings on this subject had taken place. That question would be well put because that hearing took place in 1974, 25 years ago. That statement was made by automobile manufacturers in connection with the fuel efficiency standards that were discussed during that year and were implemented. As a result of the implementation of those standards, we are saving 3 million barrels of oil per day in the United States as compared with the 17 million gallons per day that cars and trucks, in fact, use. In other words, even from the point of view of a relatively conservative Senator, as I consider myself, we have an example of a highly successful regulatory action on the part of the Government of the United States, a regulatory action that took place 25 years ago and was, for all practical purposes, fully implemented within 6 years of the time of its implementation. That is the first notable point about the subject we are discussing today. The second is that the argument I quoted turned out to be wholly inaccurate. The evidence of that inaccuracy, of course, is on every street, road, and highway in the United States. The genius of American manufacturers created an automobile that met all of the fuel efficiency standards that were implemented a quarter of a century ago without a substantial downsizing of our automobiles' weight, with a tremendous contribution to cleaner air, and with the contribution of saving 3 million gallons of gasoline each and every day of each and every year, every single gallon of which, where we are using it, would come from imports and from overseas, further exacerbating our trade deficits. I find it particularly curious that we should look back at an experiment so totally successful in every respect, in cleaning up our air, in reducing our use of petroleum products, in reducing our trade deficits, and in saving money for the American people, and say: Not only are we not going to repeat that experiment, we are not even going to study whether we ought to repeat that experiment. What we have done in the Congress is to tell our Federal agencies that they may not pursue studies and come up with rules and regulations and recommendations as to a second round of improving our automobile fuel efficiency either for regular passenger automobiles or for small trucks or for SUVs. The status, in connection with this bill, of course, is relatively simple. This Senate bill does not prevent the Federal Government from going ahead with such studies and making such recommendations. The House bill does, once again, as we have for the last several years, prohibit even these studies. The amendment before us now is a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that the Senate should not accept that House provision. It is neither more nor less than that. Every one of the 98 Senators, in addition to you and me, has been deluged by statements from opponents to this modest sense-of-the-Senate resolution, stating, first, that it would make our highways less safe, even though our death rate on our highways is remarkably lower now--I think three times lower than it was before we went through this experiment the first time--that there is no way the automobile manufacturers can meet the requirements that would be imposed if we allowed these studies to go forward without going back to sub-subcompacts--an argument that was shown to be totally fallacious and without reason some 25 years ago. In short, there is not a single argument being presented against this amendment that was not presented 25 years ago to this body and to the other body and to the people of the United States and proven to be without merit. Can we learn nothing from the past? Are we so frightened, as Members of the Senate, that we are not even going to try to determine in an orderly fashion whether or not we can do better with respect to the fuel efficiency of the internal combustion engine? The proposition, I think, is bizarre, that we should prohibit even a study and a set of proposed regulations on this subject. There could possibly be more bite to this argument if what we were faced with was the imminent imposition of new requirements that were highly unreasonable in nature and about which it might be argued that they were impossible to attain. If we were faced with a proposed amendment that said the Federal Government could use no part of this appropriation to enforce such standards, that would be one thing. But what the opponents to this sense-of-the-Senate resolution are saying is: Don't even look into the question. Don't do anything. Don't try to learn whether or not we can come up with more efficient internal combustion engines. Let's just ignore it.

Mr. GORTON. I share the Senator's concerns and I am certain we will deal with those questions and ideas in the context of reauthorization legislation.

Mr. GORTON. The Senator from Nevada is entirely correct. If we can only take a quick vote on it with the Senators on the floor now, we would probably succeed. Unfortunately, we have yet to persuade all of our colleagues of this matter. The question the Senator puts--and he knows the answer--is a very profound and a very serious question.

Mr. GORTON. Yes. The Senator from Washington will be delighted if the Senator takes that time.

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, it is often said, I think accurately, that what differentiates human beings from most other animals, most other mammals, is the extraordinary ability of human beings to learn from experience. Yet on the floor of the Senate this afternoon we have heard eloquent statements opposing this current amendment that indicate that experience is of no value to some Members and to some of their arguments. Mr. President, 25 years ago the predecessors of the opponents to this amendment repeatedly stated on the floor of the Senate, as well as in the hearing rooms of the Senate, that to require more fuel-efficient automobiles and small trucks was to endanger the safety and the lives of the American people and to sentence them to driving in subcompacts and sub-subcompacts. There are only two differences between the circumstances of the argument in 1974 and the circumstances of the argument in 1999. The first of those differences is that all of the arguments of those who opposed setting higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles and small trucks made in 1974 were proved dramatically to be in error. At one level, the most important of those arguments was that people would no longer have choice; they would all be forced into smaller automobiles. Here it is 25 years later. We know that is not the case. The requirements imposed in 1974 were, for all practical purposes, completely met within a period of 6 years, and the course has been essentially flat since that day. Every single day of the week, every year, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, the people of the United States save 3 million gallons of gasoline. Multiply 3 million gallons by $1.50 a gallon. That is $4.5 million. They pollute the air less; they spend less money; they contribute less to our international trade deficit that continues to grow year after year. And, second, our highways are far safer now than they were then. Traffic deaths per million miles driven have declined by more than 50 percent in the years since those fuel efficiency standards were imposed on the American people. Yet we hear some of the same arguments being made over and over again. But there is another difference between the argument in 1999 and the argument in 1974. In 1974, the Senate was debating whether or not to allow specific new standards to go into effect. In 1999, we are arguing whether or not to allow the Federal Government to engage in a proceeding that determines whether or not new and more fuel-efficient standards are appropriate and achievable. So in addition to ignoring history and experience, the opponents have to say that they oppose knowledge, that they oppose even a vitally important study of if and how much fuel efficiency standards can be improved, consistent with safety and consistent with the economic well-being of the American people. While I have not heard every word that has been stated on this floor in opposition to this bill, it does seem to me there is at least a minor difference. There does not seem to have been a claim that more fuel-efficient cars will not benefit the environment that is to say, to cause us to have cleaner air and fewer emissions into our air. Whatever the debate was in 1974, that is not a statement now. Nor has any one of our opponents stated that it is a poor idea to save the American people millions of dollars a day in their bill for motor vehicle fuel. Nor have they made any statement that somehow or another our huge trade deficit, largely caused by imported petroleum products, is a matter to which we as Americans should be indifferent. Almost all of their argument has been on the safety issue. But it has been on the safety issue in the teeth of the experience of the American society, and it has been on the safety issue in the teeth of the proposition that if we carry out the policies contained in this amendment, this sense-of-the-Senate resolution, we are not automatically going to impose new fuel efficiency standards. We are simply going to go into an orderly process to determine whether or not new standards are feasible and, if so, how strict they should be and, if so, how long it should take to implement them. I find it breathtaking that Members of the Senate should say, no, we don't want that knowledge. We are not even willing to wait until some specific standards are proposed and specific knowledge gained to debate whether or not the imposition of those standards is worthwhile. No, we want the Senate to vote to stay ignorant, not even to learn what good public policy might be and what any of the offsets to that good public policy might be as well. Mr. President, I am not a great fan of the current national administration, but I do not think anything irrevocable is going to take place in the next year, in any event, and certainly not over the objections of the Congress of the United States. But I am not so mistrustful of a group of professionals that I am willing to say even to this administration we should not allow them to examine this issue. Incidentally, this freeze has gone through Republican administrations, as well as Democratic administrations, in any event. No, there are only two arguments being made against this amendment. The substantive argument is that we should ignore history and believe arguments in 1999 that were made in 1974 and shown to be entirely invalid in 1974; and second, the proposition that we should remain ignorant, that this is not important enough, not significant enough to the American people that we should even begin a process of determining whether or not we can clean up our air, make our cars more fuel efficient, become less dependent on foreign oil, and at the same time, increase the safety standards in our automobiles. The debate is neither more complicated nor less complicated than just that. It should be understood by everyone, and I plead with my colleagues in this body to allow this process to go forward and to debate a real proposal, not a theoretical set of objections that were invalid in 1974 and are equally invalid in 1999.

Mr. GORTON. I yield the Senator 2 more minutes.

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

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, first point. I regret that the Senators from Michigan believe that the automobile industry located in that State and the magnificent workers who are employed there are unable to compete with foreign automobile companies when we try to make our automobiles more fuel efficient. In fact, they have shown their magnificent ability to compete, and to compete very well, in the past decade. I am certain that they would continue to do so. Second, this sense-of-the-Senate resolution simply asks the conference committee members from the Senate to reject a House provision that says that nothing can take place. It certainly does not say that the conference committee cannot condition the moving forward of the Department of Transportation on future CAFE standards in any way it would like to do so. But the net effect, as I have said before, of the House position, supported by the opponents of this amendment, is that we need to put our heads in the sand; we don't need to study--as a matter of fact, we should be prohibited from studying whether or not we can improve the fuel efficiency of our automobiles and small trucks, improve the quality of our air, reduce the cost of fuel to the average American consumer, reduce our trade deficit, all consistent with the safety of our drivers and of the passengers in our automobiles. I, for one, am convinced that we can do so. But more than that, I am convinced that we ought to determine whether or not we can do so, and the opponents of this amendment simply say we should not even try. Mr. President, that is a terribly pessimistic attitude toward the technological ability of the people in the industries of the United States, and one that I don't think the Senate of the United States should accept. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, this is another example of Members of the Senate attempting to say they know much more about a particular business than do the people who run that business and depend upon customer satisfaction in order to run it profitably. Fortunately, it is now only a sense-of-the-Senate resolution. However, it nonetheless, with respect to involuntary exclusion from planes, applies to about 1 person in 10,000 and is therefore a sledgehammer used to crush a fly, and does it in a way which will be either ineffective because the information that passengers get will be of no use to them or will cut down on the number of tickets that are sold which will raise the prices passengers pay. The provision about Internet pricing, if implemented, will simply mean there will be no lower prices offered on the Internet than there are elsewhere. That will also raise the prices some passengers pay. The voluntary attitudes of the airlines are only beginning to go into effect. Even the GAO report quoted by the Senator from Oregon reads: The real deal is what the individual airlines come out with in the plans. Once they do, they can be held accountable. We ought to leave this to that accountability and not decide we know the airline business better than the airlines themselves.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, today the Senate will immediately resume consideration of the second-degree Bryan-Wyden amendment regarding the Forest Service budget. By agreement, a vote on or in relation to that amendment will take place at 10:30 a.m. Further amendments to the Interior appropriations bill are expected throughout today's session. Senators, therefore, can expect votes throughout the day in anticipation of completing action on the bill. It is expected that the Senate will have approximately 2 hours of debate on S.J. Res. 33, with a vote on final passage during today's session, with the time to be determined by the two leaders. For the remainder of the week, the Senate is expected to begin consideration of the Transportation appropriations bill.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I just read a text that was submitted to me. I am going to offer what I hope is a slight correction to that for the benefit of all Senators. I believe, as manager of the bill, it is highly possible there are only two other unresolved matters in connection with the Interior appropriations bill. One is, of course, this Bryan-Wyden amendment that will be voted on in about 1 hour. The other is cloture on the Hutchison amendment. There was a vote on that cloture last night. It failed, but it seemed to have failed primarily by reason of absent Senators. The majority leader moved to reconsider and, of course, can bring up that motion at any time. As manager of the bill, I do not know of any other amendments that will require rollcall votes. It does not mean there might not be one or two, but I do not know of any others. We now have two managers' amendments ready: one dealing with legislative matters and one dealing with money matters, but I hope we will have settled all other outstanding issues in connection with the bill. In any event, if there are Senators who wish to bring up amendments that they reserved way back in August with respect to the bill that are not settled in these two managers' amendments, I certainly urge them to come to the floor and to be prepared to present them immediately after the 10:30 vote on the Bryan-Wyden second-degree amendment. With that, Mr. President, I see Senator Wyden present, I see Senator Craig present, and so we are ready for debate.

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, in fiscal year 1990, the Forest Service sold 11 billion board feet of timber for harvest and for productive use. For the last 2 years, we have authorized through our appropriations 3.6 billion board feet of harvest. The administration proposed in its budget for this year 3.2 billion, a further reduction, and a reduction from 1990 of 71 percent, as my colleague from Idaho pointed out. Peculiarly, or interestingly enough, the Forest Service in its actual National Forest Land Management Plan allows for a harvest of about twice this amount. It is only the appropriations level recommended by the administration, and for that matter by this Congress, that has the level almost 50 percent below what the Forest Service plans say is both economically and environmentally sustainable. That is the first peculiar argument. Second, the committee bill does not increase the allowable harvest. It simply allows the same harvest for next year that appropriations bills passed overwhelmingly by this body and signed by the President have permitted for the course of the last 2 years. The question is whether or not we should continue to move toward no harvest at all, as many of the national environmental organizations recommend, or whether we should consider continuing the relatively modest harvests that were promised by this President and this administration at the beginning of his Presidency, most particularly in the Pacific Northwest. The Senator from Idaho pointed out that this is not exclusively a Northwest issue; that it applies to forests in other parts of the country, including the hardwood forests in the Northeast. The original Bryan amendment distributes this money relatively widely--a fairly small percentage of the overall Interior appropriations bill--including a modest amount which simply is not to be spent at all and will go to the national debt. Most of that modest amount, however, is taken up and spent by the Wyden second-degree amendment that is to be directed at surveys of various species in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. About those surveys, the Oregonian wrote an editorial 3 days ago. Three paragraphs of that editorial read as follows: Maybe now it is finally clear to the Clinton administration that it is fiscally and practically impossible to count every slug, every lichen, every salamander that lives on every timber sale on public forest land in the Northwest. The surveys of rare species of animals and plants required in the Northwest Forest Plan are ``technically impossible'' and ``preposterous,'' in the words of the Society of American Foresters, a professional group holding its national convention in Portland this week. . . Intentional or not, the survey requirement inserted into the Northwest Forest Plan has proven to be a poison pill--a way to block all logging and prevent the plan from working as it was designed. That is the end of my quote from that editorial. The Wyden second-degree amendment wastes $10 million. It literally wastes $10 million on surveys that are ``impossible'' according to the newspaper, ``preposterous'' according to the Society of American Farmers, and ``a poison pill'' for any timber sales whatever. Estimates made during the course of a debate last week on carrying out all of these surveys were somewhere between $5 billion and $9 billion--not the $10 million that is included in this amendment. In other words, we are being asked by this amendment simply to throw away $10 million on useless surveys and at the same time to reduce further a timber sale program, a harvest, that is approximately half of what the Clinton Forest Service and its forest plans has said is environmentally and economically appropriate in the forests of the United States. There is no rational ground for either the first-degree amendment or the second-degree amendment, except for the proposition that we wish to drive as quickly as we possibly can to a situation in which there is no longer any harvest of timber products on the national forests or, for that matter, all of the public lands of the United States. That is a conclusion and a goal that is economically unsound, environmentally unsound in the United States, bad for our balanced payments, and bad for the management of forests and the rest of the world whose products would be substituted for our own if that goal were reached. I trust that sound judgment and wisdom will prevail and that both of these amendments will be rejected. I want to point out once again that the committee report, the Appropriations Committee bill that is before the Senate, does not increase timber harvests on public lands of the United States. It retains exactly the level they were authorized for in the current year by the current appropriations bill, a level that the Senator from Idaho, I, and the junior Senator from Oregon believe already to be unwisely low. We did not come here with a controversial point of view; we came here with essentially a freeze. We ask our colleagues to support the committee in that connection.

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

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I should like to make the following announcement. We will have that managers' amendment--I think there is only one that is possible; it may be in two sections--ready within the next half hour or so to present. It does represent an accommodation of the requests of many Members, with the understanding of all Members. I think it will take only a very few minutes to present and to have it accepted. At that point, we will have only the Hutchison amendment outstanding. The majority leader has reserved the right to ask for reconsideration of the cloture motion that was defeated yesterday. I suspect when he chooses to do that, we will in a relatively short period of time finish debate and dispose of the Hutchison amendment one way or another and then go to final passage of the Interior appropriations bill. That means, as far as I am concerned, I am going to vacate the floor at this point. Whenever the chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation wants to start his bill, he can do so. I will ask him for the right to interrupt at some point when I am ready with the managers' amendment and present it then. I see no reason to keep the Senate from moving forward now. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GORTON

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

Mr. GORTON

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I wish to say to my good friend from Utah that I agree that draining Lake Powell is not a reasonable proposal, and I support his effort to put the issue to rest with this amendment. However, I would like to ask my colleague from Utah if he believes that his amendment in any way opens the door to the administration to pursue the decommissioning of other Bureau of Reclamation projects without Congressional approval?

Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote on the last set of collective amendments, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. preservation of fossils collected from public lands